Did the CFTC Chairman Behnam Admit Regulatory Laws are Outdated?

Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Rostin Behnam made some comments about cryptocurrencies in a recent interview with CNBC. Behnam was asked if the CFTC had a synergistic relationship with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when it came to sharing resources to regulate the crypto industry. He responded by saying:

“We do get along. We can share, we have shared, and we will share.”

The CFTC boss further explained: “For the CFTC, the difficulty is we are a derivatives regulator. We don’t oversee the cash markets. So, the authority that I’ve been asking Congress for is cash authorities, so that we can go in the bitcoin cash market, the ether cash market, and the other digital commodity token [markets].”

When quizzed about recent comments from SEC chairman Gary Gensler, who stated that most of the crypto tokens in existence today are securities, Behnam explained: “Well, we’re gonna have to figure that out legislatively because it’s a new asset class. There are different components and characteristics of this asset class as opposed to traditional asset classes.” the government official further noted:

“We have to rely on 70-year-old case law to determine what’s a security, what’s a commodity.”

“We have one court case in New York that says Bitcoin is a commodity … We’re trying to find a reasonable outcome that will create certainty for the market.”

CFTC Chairman Says Relationship with SEC Solid

That said, the American lawyer clarified that there was no bashing of heads between the two regulatory agencies on the topic as most people believed.

SEC chair Gary Gensler has also clarified in the past that the two regulatory watchdogs are concerting their efforts to deliver better regulation to the crypto space. While acknowledging that Bitcoin (BTC) was a commodity, Gensler claimed that “of the nearly 10,000 tokens in the crypto market, I believe the vast majority are securities.”

In recent weeks, the SEC has taken big steps to work toward regulating the crypto space. Last month, Gensler announced that his agency was working on erecting an office specially dedicated to reviewing new crypto filings.