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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has confirmed crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ether are commodities after chairman Rostin Behnam discussed the topic. In an interview with CNBC last week, Behnam spoke about the regulation of cryptocurrencies by the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The chairman was asked to talk about the bill in congress putting the SEC in charge of security tokens and the CFTC in charge of commodity tokens.
“This is a little bit of an age-old issue between the CFTC and the SEC. We have a great relationship historically,” said Behnam. “Within this space, in my view, it makes sense for commodities to be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and securities to be regulated by the SEC.”
The CFTC chairman outlined how the agency is collaborating with the SEC to regulate the crypto sector, noting that the crypto market currently has no customer protections. He noted that there would be some coins that are securities and others that are commodities within the crypto space.
SEC chairman Gary Gensler claimed that most crypto tokens in the market are securities, but Behnam stressed that the most prominent cryptocurrencies are commodities. “Well, I can say for sure, Bitcoin is a commodity,” he emphasized. “Ether as well.”
Behnam admitted that there might be plenty of security coins. Still, he also noted that there are a lot of community coins and clarified: “I think that each agency has jurisdiction over commodities and securities, respectively.”
The contradiction raised the question of whether there was any disagreement between the two agencies, to which the CFTC replied, “I wouldn’t say there is disagreement,” emphasizing that each agency tries to do what’s best.
Last week, the crypto market experienced another sell-off, losing value for the market. Behnam comments, “A lot of people got hurt. A lot of value was lost in the market, and there really are no customer protections right now.”
As a result, Rostin Behnam has confirmed the determination of the CFTC and the SEC to regulate the crypto sector “thoughtfully” to protect customers of Bitcoin and Ether and protect financial stability.
