The chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Rostin Behnam, has lobbied to have the CFTC regulate the two biggest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, as commodities. In a speech before the US Senate Committee on July 9, he cited a recent ruling in the US state of Illinois, from an appellate case on a $120 million Ponzi scheme from an Oregon man to clarify that Bitcoin, Ethereum, Olympus (OHM) – a decentralised stablecoin based on a completely uncorrelated savings model – and KlimaDAO (KLIMA) are all commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act.
Behnam pointed out that spot digital asset markets that don’t qualify as securities would fall between the regulatory cracks, noting a 2022 report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) calling out the risks posed by cryptocurrencies and leveraged trading and suggesting the need for a legislative framework to better regulate digital commodities. ‘Our solutions fall short of the needed regulatory framework given the pace and scale of the risks we are seeing across our markets and industries,’ Behnam said. He recommended five specific legislative avenues for regulating crypto, including mandated rules specific to cryptocurrencies, a systemfor levying a stabilising fee, coerced disclosures related to crypto assets, and improvements to KYC and AML at the CFTC.
Source: Yahoo! Finance
