The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has shared with Congress its plans to regulate the crypto market with “full oversight capabilities” if the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act turns into legislation. The regulator claims to have the appropriate expertise and experience and believes that “Many digital belongings represent commodities.” Meanwhile, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has insisted that the overwhelming majority of crypto tokens are securities.
CFTC Chairman’s Testimony on Crypto Regulation and the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act
The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Rostin Behnam, mentioned how his company would regulate the crypto market in a legislative listening to Thursday earlier than the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
The goal of the listening to was to evaluate the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) which seeks to empower the CFTC “with unique jurisdiction over the digital commodities spot market.” The bipartisan invoice was launched within the U.S. Senate in August by Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), John Boozman (R-AR), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and John Thune (R-SD).
Behnam instructed lawmakers:
Many digital belongings represent commodities … The CFTC’s experience and expertise make it the appropriate regulator for the digital asset commodity market.
He defined that his company “facilitates buyer protections by its principles-based market oversight and disclosure regime aimed toward guaranteeing transparency, integrity, and safety of transactions.”
Behnam proceeded to element that since 2014, the CFTC has introduced nearly 60 enforcement digital asset-related circumstances, together with a current matter involving a $1.7 billion fraudulent bitcoin scheme.
“With an absence of full visibility into the digital commodity asset market, the company’s enforcement program has had to lean totally on suggestions and complaints from the general public to determine fraud and manipulation,” the CFTC chairman described, including:
While we’re engaged in a complete effort throughout the company to police these markets and their contributors with the instruments at the moment obtainable to us, the DCCPA will enable us to apply our full oversight capabilities without restriction.
Chairman Behnam concluded that “with the extra assets contemplated by the funding mechanism within the DCCPA and the clear mandates for buyer training, outreach, and data gathering to make sure that our efforts attain all demographics of the investing group, … the CFTC can transfer swiftly in effectuating this new regime.”
Meanwhile, two different payments have been launched in Congress this 12 months to make the CFTC the first regulator of the crypto spot markets. The “Responsible Financial Innovation Act” was introduced in June by U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY). The different invoice was the “Digital Commodity Exchange Act of 2022,” launched in April by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA), Tom Emmer (R-MN), and Darren Soto (D-FL).
Meanwhile, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, has mentioned repeatedly that the overwhelming majority of crypto tokens are securities and will fall below the purview of his company. However, he acknowledged that bitcoin is a commodity. Last week, U.S. Senator Pat Toomey mentioned Congress ought to step in with crypto steering and the SEC ought to present rather more readability on the way it regulates the crypto sector.
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