In the tug-of-war between the United States regulators over control of crypto assets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair has tripled-down on his stance that Ether and stablecoins are commodities.
Stablecoins and ether ETH ($1,532) is a commodity that should fall under the jurisdiction of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, its chairman announced again during the recent session of the Senate.
In the March 8 Senate Farm Hearing, CFTC chairman Rostin Behnam asked Senator Kirsten Gillibrand about the different opinions of the regulator and the Securities and Exchange Commission following the CFTC settlement in 2021 with the stablecoin transmitter Tether. Behnam replied “Regardless of the regulatory framework around stablecoins, they will be commodities in my opinion.”
“It’s clear that our law enforcement officers and employees on Tether, a stablecoin, are assets,” he added.
In the past, the CFTC has announced that some digital assets such as Ether, Bitcoin BTC ($21,667) and Tether USDT ($1.00) is a product – as in his case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in mid-December. Asked what evidence the CFTC would present to gain regulatory authority over Ether during a Senate hearing, Behnam said he “will not allow” Ether futures to be listed on exchanges.
The CFTC if “is not satisfied that it is a material fact.” He added, “We have a risk of litigation, we have a risk of corporate trust if we do something like this without good legal protection to support our argument that [the asset] is a commodity.”
The statement apparently confirmed Behnam’s sometimes sceptical view of Ether’s structure. At an invitation-only event at Princeton University in November last year, he said that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that can be considered a commodity, apart from Ether. Just a month ago, he suggested that Ether could also be considered a commodity.
Behnam’s most recent comments contradicted the views of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who expressed in a February article. 23 In an interview with New York magazine that “everything other than Bitcoin” is a security, a statement that many crypto lawyers rejected.
Different views of market regulators can set the stage for conflict as everyone is looking for regulatory control of the crypto industry. In mid-February, the SEC withdrew its jurisdiction against the virtual currency provider Paxos saying it could sue the company for violating investor protection laws accusing Binance USD BUSD ($1.00) A stablecoin is an anonymous security.
At the same time, the regulator targeted Terraform Labs and called its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD Classic (USTC) a security, a move that Delphi Labs General Counsel Gabriel Shapiro said could be “a paperback.” traffic “The SEC can regulate it future lawsuits against other stablecoin issuers. SEC crypto crackdowns have backfired from the industry. Circle Founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said he doesn’t believe the “SEC is the one to regulate stablecoins,” saying that a bank regulator should oversee them.
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