Recently the Senate bill has initiated debates where there are arguments regarding which authority should have control over the crypto market
The chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or generally known as CFTC, Rostin Behnam, has claimed that bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) cryptocurrencies are commodities. During an interview with Squawk Box of CNBC on Monday, he made this statement. At the same time, citing the recent Senate bill that is seeking to give control over a huge portion of the crypto market to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that would leave the CFTC having lesser control over the nascent market.
Behman considered the issues as an age-old matter between both the state agencies. As to the CFTC Chairman, the SEC and CFTC, over the years, had a great relationship, and they continued to work together and communicate. He added more to this that both the entities have many similarities and common registrants. However, Behnam thinks it makes a lot of sense for CFTC to regulate commodities and regulate securities SEC would be preferred.
Further, he said that the digital assets space contains thousands of tokens that naturally feature some securities and commodities. To this end, the chairperson of CFTC said that it makes quite a sense to analyze both types of assets in order to determine which of these tokens actually qualify as commodities or securities.
The CFTC Chairman acknowledged that going through the crypto market in order to differentiate securities from commodities could be complex. As per him, the freshness of several coins and the tech that they leverage would mean to check what securities or commodities constitute under the traditional laws regarding securities and commodities.
However, Behnam accepted that there are not thousands but hundreds of security coins, where he also argues that commodity coins are also responsible for a quite fair share of such tokens in the crypto industry. He also said that both the regulatory authorities are trying only to do what is best. Behnam could echo the thoughts similar to SEC chairperson Gary Gensler, who said that the crypto market has nothing in the name of consumer protections. He also pointed out that the crypto market’s crash last week has highlighted the requirement of such protections for customers.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/05/18/has-cftc-chairman-rostin-behnam-labeled-bitcoin-and-ethereum-as-commodities/