Key Takeaways:
- Bitcoin, according to CFTC Chairman Behnam, might flourish in a regulated market where institutional investors are more at ease investing in the space.
- Behnam also asserted that the CFTC’s present funding is insufficient to adequately oversee the cryptocurrency market.
As the cryptocurrency market grows and its key assets become more widely used, doubts have arisen about which financial authority will regulate it and assure the compliance requirements of its players in the United States.
Behnam proposed that a solid regulatory structure may allow institutional investors to enter the market. According to the chair, institutional inflows into the cryptocurrency area will only occur if there is a set of regulations governing these markets.
Rostin Behnam asserted on Thursday that if Bitcoin traded on a CFTC-supervised market, its value may “double.” The remarks come as the cryptocurrency business is coming under increasing scrutiny on a worldwide scale, from Brazil to Australia to Tether’s well-known legal issues here.
More recently, Benham said that he had already given the CFTC permission to start making plans to take the lead and finance a sizable chunk of the crypto business.
As a result, the U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is attempting to establish itself as the primary cryptocurrency regulator, but it has a bad reputation due to litigation it has filed against companies like Ripple, whose CEO accused the agency of being a bully and “seeking to control through enforcement.”
Former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo recently asserted that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) should regulate cryptocurrency rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission in an interview with Yahoo Finance (SEC).
Behnam had before proposed the same. He even said that the cryptocurrency market is an emerging one, and given its size, it is sure to scale, posing dangers to financial stability. He even said, “The CFTC has properly and actively been pursuing enforcement cases in the digital asset sector for many years now.“
Behnam stated that the CFTC is prepared to serve as a “principal copy on the beat” in order to monitor this.
Behnam also asserted that the CFTC’s present funding is insufficient to adequately oversee the cryptocurrency market. “We’ve had to completely rely on whistleblowers, on customer complaints, and on tips coming to us,” he said of the roughly 60 cases the CFTC has pursued.
Behnam also endorsed a measure put up by the Senate Agriculture Committee that would authorize the CFTC to serve as the primary regulator of the cryptocurrency business.
In addition to enabling the commission to enforce penalties and repairing the “wounds and scars” of its underinvestment, this would put an end to the long-running disagreement between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission about who should regulate specific aspects of the cryptocurrency business.
