Behnam said to an assembly of business executives and lawyers at a Rutgers Law and Wall Street Blockchain Alliance event in Manhattan: “It's a really cynical stance to assume two agencies can't figure it out and work together.”
Although it is doubtful that US lawmakers would approve new crypto legislation by the end of the year, the regulators have held a number of open discussions and taken investigative steps to determine who has the right to do what. There is a sense that the SEC and the CFTC are in conflict over issues like which regulating organization should be in charge of overseeing cryptocurrencies and which currencies are considered commodities.
In this sense, Behnam restated his view on Monday that Bitcoin and Ether, the two most significant cryptocurrencies, are commodities. Behnam remarked:
“Ether, I‘ve suggested that it’s a commodity, I know Chairman Gensler thinks otherwise — or at least hasnt certainly declared one or the other.”
Because Ether has switched to a proof-of-stake consensus method, SEC Chair Gary Gensler has questioned whether it should be regulated by the SEC. Gensler claims that Ether is a security.
Behnam went on to say that although the SEC and CFTC are both representatives of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the body is not the appropriate venue to work out the specifics of how the two organizations will divide up responsibility for overseeing cryptocurrencies. Instead, he asserted that Congress is the proper body to establish such limits.
In September, Gensler reaffirmed his ongoing conviction that cryptocurrency are securities, although he added that he would back Congress's decision to give the CFTC regulatory authority over the sector. The main defense put forth by Gensler is that cryptocurrencies are securities. The SEC chair stated last month that the majority of digital tokens are comparable to stocks since the supporting businesses or organizations are controlled by business people seeking to draw in the general public.
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