Yesterday at the Futures Industry Association Expo, the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair, Rostin Behnam has called for new crypto and DeFi regulation.
According to him, the crypto industry needs a comprehensive approach to regulating the cryptocurrency as well as DeFi.
Bahnam’s call statement is contrary to the views of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) leader, Gary Gensler. He believes that existing regulatory and security laws are enough for the crypto industry to function.
In one of the statements made by Bahman, he reiterated that the CFTC work is enforcement. He lauded the commission for securing orders that amounted to over $6 billion in financial relief in the past year.
He further pointed out that 45 of these enforcement actions were geared towards investigating gross misconduct in the crypto market.
Behnam stated:
“Over a third of the enforcement actions taken by the Commission was related to misconduct involving digital assets. Specifically, 34% of the total 131 cases initiated since 2015 is pertaining to mishandling digital assets.”
One of the major points raised in his speech was that 70% of the crypto industry’s digital assets should be categorised as commodities. Towards this end, the CFTC Chair charged Congress to empower the commission to regulate these crypto assets through explicit rules.
Additionally, the CFTC Chair boasted about a major win against the Ooki Dao. The decentralized autonomous organization is charged with operating a criminal trading platform and acting as a futures commission merchant (FCM). OkiDao was fined a sum of $643,542 by the U.S. District Court.
While the different opinion views on crypto regulation between the CFTC Chair and SEC leader would have a lasting impact on the crypto industry, Behram maintains that additional regulations are strongly needed.
