CFTC chairman says Ethereum is a commodity

The latest statement passed by Rostin Benham over the nature of Ethereum (ETH), created a new controversy among US lawmakers. 

In the United States (US), there are two dominant financial market regulatory bodies. These are the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC agency regulates the crypto market with more dominance over the CFTC agency. The CFTC agency regulates derivatives markets, including futures, options, and swaps. The SEC agency ensures the creation of fair markets, corporate disclosure, protecting Investors, and enforcing the law.

On 8 March 2023, Before the Senate Agriculture Committee, the CFTC chair Rostin Benham said that he believes Ethereum is security and should be listed on CFTC exchanges.

“I’ve made the argument that Ethereum is a commodity…it’s been listed on CFTC exchanges for quite some time,” Benham said.

According to Benham, his opinion on the nature of Ethereum will provide a basic support for the CFTC agency to regulate the derivatives markets trading ETH & also underlying products.

Further on the stablecoins, Benham said that Stablecoins should also be a commodity in his opinion despite the comprehensive dedicated regulatory framework on the stablecoin companies.

“I agree … that stablecoins are and should be … regulated financial instruments. Notwithstanding a regulatory framework around stablecoin, they’re going to be commodities in my view,” the CFTC chair said.

Just a few weeks ago, SEC chairman Gary Gensler stated that all cryptocurrencies are securities, except Bitcoin. For that statement, Gensler faced huge criticism from the crypto proponents. 

However many experts said that we should not focus on the statement passed by the SEC chairman because it was his personal opinion on the nature of cryptocurrencies. 

In the present time, the SEC agency fighting against the San Francisco headquartered Fintech company Ripple over the nature of the XRP token, as a priority case in its to do list. In Dec 2020, the SEC initiated the case against Ripple executives & Ripple labs over the sale of more than $1.3 billion worth of unregistered securities sale. 

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