Former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo asserted that the CFTC is the only regulatory agency in the United States with experience regulating Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets.
While the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is broadening its oversight of the cryptocurrency industry, a commissioner with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) argued that crypto regulation is not within the SEC’s jurisdiction.
On Wednesday, CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz declared on Twitter that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) should be regulated by the CFTC rather than the SEC. Quintenz emphasized that cryptocurrencies are commodities and thus fall under the CFTC’s jurisdiction, in contrast to securities, which are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, stating:
“Just so we’re all clear here, the SEC has no authority over pure commodities or their trading venues, whether those commodities are wheat, gold, oil or crypto assets.”
Quintenz’s remarks came just over a half-hour after former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo made a similar argument on Twitter, claiming that the CFTC is the only US regulatory agency with experience regulating Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets. “If the Biden Administration is serious about sensible cryptocurrency regulation, it needs to nominate a CFTC chairman,” Giancarlo noted.
The United States House Committee on Agriculture, a permanent committee of the United States House of Representatives, later endorsed Quintenz’s statement. According to the committee’s official Twitter account, crypto is “bigger than the SEC,” and Congress “needs to write the rules of the road to protect investors and innovation in the digital economy.”
The new statements appear to be in response to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s recent remarks calling for increased regulatory oversight of the crypto industry in order to broaden the regulatory scope with decentralized exchanges. Gensler reportedly stated that there has been considerable debate over which digital assets should fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction, given the agency’s previous confirmation that major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) were not securities.
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