Gary Gensler, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s chairman, referred to Bitcoin as a commodity. He stated that the SEC would collaborate with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and banking regulators for ensuring oversight of the crypto industry.
Bitcoin gets commodity status
The chairman of the SEC finally clarified his position in regard to cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin. Gensler said that the asset class was undoubtedly highly speculative, which is something that people have known for quite a while. He said that due to the volatile movements in the asset class, people are hoping for a return when they make investments in crypto tokens like bitcoin. He said that this was similar to how they invest in other financial assets, such as securities.
The SEC chair stressed that there were a number of ‘crypto-financial assets’, which have a lot of attributes that put them in the category of securities. He said that this put them under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, he also added that some of them are a commodity and the only one he was willing to name in this category was bitcoin.
The SEC chief said that he was not going to discuss any other crypto token with the exception of bitcoin. Gensler’s statement is in accordance with what Rostin Benham, the chairman of the CFTC, had said the previous month. He had also referred to Bitcoin as a commodity, but he had also added the name Ether (ETH) to the list of commodities.
Bitcoin supporters pleased
The clarification from Gensler was welcome news for Bitcoin supporters. Eric Weiss, a digital assets manager, tweeted that Gensler had become the second chairman of the SEC to declare the world’s first crypto as a commodity. He said that this would make it almost impossible for anyone to alter this classification in the future, which was extremely significant.
Michael Saylor, the chief executive of Microstrategy, said that bitcoin is a commodity and necessary for treasury reserve assets. He said that governments, agencies, institutions, and politicians would be able to support the bitcoin technology this way. He added that the digital assets will also be able to support economic growth and everyone will be able to enjoy property rights.
Regulatory authorities collaborating
The SEC boss mentioned that they were working with other regulatory bodies to regulate the crypto sector, which included the CFTC as well as banking regulators. He said that there were a lot of crypto tokens that were not operating in a compliant manner. He also made a reference to stablecoins and said that there was a lot of work to be done for protecting the public.
In the previous week, Gensler had talked about a ‘one rule book’ for overseeing the crypto space. This would allow all regulatory authorities to work together to regulate the crypto market in a streamlined manner. He also said that thousands of crypto tokens were not compliant currently and ‘fair and full’ disclosures were needed from entrepreneurs before they sell their tokens.
