CFTC Chair’s ‘Ether, stablecoins are commodities’ comments stir more trouble

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  • Ether and sta­ble­coins are com­modi­ties, accord­ing to Ros­tin Benham
  • Oppos­ing view­points of dif­fer­ent mar­ket reg­u­la­tors in the U.S fuel­ing dis­cord and lack of clarity

As the tug of war between U.S reg­u­la­tors over con­trol of cryp­to-assets con­tin­ues, the Chair­man of the Com­mod­i­ty Futures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (CFTC) has tripled down on his posi­tion that Ether and sta­ble­coins are commodities.

Sta­ble­coins and Ether are com­modi­ties and should be reg­u­lat­ed by the CFTC, Ros­tin Behnam stat­ed again dur­ing a recent Sen­ate hearing.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the CFTC had claimed that cer­tain dig­i­tal assets, such as Ether, Bit­coin, and Teth­er, are com­modi­ties. Such a claim was made in its mid-Decem­ber law­suit against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Dur­ing the Sen­ate hear­ing, Ben­ham was also asked what evi­dence the CFTC would present to gain reg­u­la­to­ry influ­ence over Ether. For his part, he claimed that if the CFTC did not believe Ether is a com­mod­i­ty asset, it would not have allowed Ether Futures prod­ucts to be list­ed on CFTC exchanges.

SEC v. CFTC?

Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand asked the CFTC’s Chair­man about the dif­fer­ing views held by the CFTC and the SEC fol­low­ing the CFTC’s 2021 set­tle­ment with sta­ble­coin issuer Teth­er. To the same, Behnam responded,

“Notwith­stand­ing a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work around sta­ble­coins, they’re going to be com­modi­ties in my view.”

He went on to add,

“It was clear to our enforce­ment team and the com­mis­sion that Teth­er, a sta­ble­coin, was a commodity.”

The remark appears to have solid­i­fied Behnam’s some­times shaky stance on Ether clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Dur­ing an event held at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty last Novem­ber, he stat­ed that Bit­coin is the only cryp­tocur­ren­cy that could be con­sid­ered a com­mod­i­ty, exclud­ing Ether. Only a month pri­or to this event, he had pro­posed that Ether be con­sid­ered a com­mod­i­ty as well.

Behnam’s recent com­ments con­tra­dict SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s claim in a New York Mag­a­zine inter­view last month that “every­thing except Bit­coin” is a secu­ri­ty. A claim that has been crit­i­cized by mul­ti­ple crypto-lawyers.

The oppos­ing view­points of dif­fer­ent mar­ket reg­u­la­tors in the U.S. could cre­ate an envi­ron­ment for dis­cord. Espe­cial­ly as each vies for reg­u­la­to­ry con­trol of the crypto-industry.



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