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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Describing an organization with a license from the CFTC as an "unregulated futures market" is just flat wrong, I'm not really sure why you're motte-baileying here.

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They offer contracts that are almost certainly outside the scope of regulation, an appeals court has already ruled that some of their contracts are indeed subject to state laws and not CFTC regulation, and they are continuing to push the envelope. How is it wrong to call them an unregulated market under the circumstances?

Because they are subject to a regulator and hold a license from a regulator.

Bernie Madoff's operation was also subject to a regulator and was properly registered as a broker-dealer; that did not somehow make it a regulated operation, at least not in the sense of actually complying with the regulations. Boiler rooms are also subject to a regulator (the SEC) and obviously are not regulated brokerages.

Really it sounds like this is a disagreement about what it means for a market to be "regulated" -- I draw the line at compliance, you seem to draw the line elsewhere.

Not to go prescriptivist, but yes I think your "line" for regulated is just semantically incorrect, a non-compliant organization can still be regulated.

One could argue that unenforced regulation (and a thereby non-compliant organization) is not that different from nonexistent regulation.

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