Companies have inquired in the past month about regulations that would govern exchanges for bitcoin derivatives, a top U.S. regulator said on Wednesday, a sign such virtual currencies could become a more mainstream financial product. Regulators have stepped up their efforts to rein in bitcoin after incidents such as the collapse of Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange that filed for bankruptcy after losing an estimated $650 million worth of customer bitcoins. The novelty of the technology has made it hard for regulators to categorize bitcoin, but trading derivatives such as futures or swaps would subject companies to oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "Let me tell you, (if) they've got a derivatives contract, we have jurisdiction... and we should regulate it," Bart Chilton, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission told Reuters in an interview. In the past 30 days, a number of companies requested information to see what the rules were for setting up
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