SEC Chair Gary Gensler signals he would support Congress giving the CFTC authority to oversee and regulate bitcoin and ether, if the SEC can retain its power
The position fits Gensler’s broader regulatory posture: he had told Congress that decentralized exchanges should be regulated, and later coverage described his plan to treat most crypto as securities in his wider securities-regulation agenda.
First-order effects
Congress gains a clearer signal that a bitcoin-and-ether CFTC mandate could win support from the SEC chair only if legislation preserves SEC authority.
The CFTC is positioned as a prospective spot-market overseer for the two named assets, while the SEC retains a claim over activity or instruments it considers within its remit.
Second-order effects
Crypto platforms and issuers face the prospect of designing compliance around two federal regulators rather than treating CFTC authority as a replacement for SEC scrutiny.
Any congressional market-structure proposal becomes a negotiation over agency boundaries, with the SEC’s retained powers central to the bill’s scope.
Third-order effects
If Congress formalizes this division, US crypto oversight would move toward asset- and activity-based jurisdiction rather than a single regulator for the sector.
The pattern points to legitimacy through federal supervision, but with the SEC and CFTC’s overlapping claims remaining a durable feature of crypto market structure.
The trend: US crypto policy is moving from broad calls for oversight toward defining how SEC and CFTC authority is divided without relinquishing either agency’s enforcement role.
1) I'M NOT A REGULATOR, THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE but: my current best guess is consistent what @GaryGensler says: that the CFTC will regulate spot + futures for non-security tokens, and the SEC will regulate spot + issuance of tokens that are securities https://www.wsj.com/...
🚨Breaking:🚨 SEC Chair Gensler says crypto market intermediaries need to register with the agency. Gensler also stated that many crypto market actors are operating as exchanges, broker-dealers, clearing firms, and custodians https://twitter.com/...
At #SECSpeaks, SEC Chair Gary Gensler tried to channel the SEC's first Chairman by building a speech around Joe Kennedy's saying that “No honest business need fear the SEC.” Kennedy was wrong, and Gensler was even more wrong when he said it today. 1/ http://sec.gov/... https://tw…
“Gensler's posture is that he should be in charge of writing the rules for crypto, but not write them.” “In crypto, only the honest businesses need fear the SEC. The incentives are bad.” Great piece by @matt_levine https://www.bloomberg.com/...
We disagree with Chair Gensler that most digital assets are securities - and we firmly believe this is a matter for Congress rather than regulators. @JChervinsky sums it up for @WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/...
“[Chair Gensler's] message is basically ‘I should be the main regulator of crypto, and...my plan is mostly to ban it.’” This is the most incisive rebuke of the SEC's failed approach to crypto I've ever seen. I'd quibble with Matt over a couple of points, but still, a must read: h…
The problem is he only considers #Bitcoin a commodity. He has specifically refused to acknowledge #ETH as a commodity and stated he is ONLY comfortable declaring #BTC a commodity. Why not provide an opinion on the top 20 Cryptos by market cap? https://twitter.com/...
3) It seems pretty likely that BTC, ETH, and many forks/variants will not be securities; and that many other tokens will be securities. (How about other large tokens? Or futures or swaps on security tokens? Or tokenized stocks? And what exactly is a stablecoin? We'll see!)
4) And, for what it's worth: I think this is all pretty reasonable; and a resolution providing regulatory oversight along these lines would be healthy for consumers, protect against risk, prevent scams, give clarity to the industry, and allow liquidity to come back to the US.
Here's the transcript of Chair Gensler's remarks. He says nothing about ETH or about the SEC's June 2018 guidance, a notable omission given that it's both the most important statement the SEC has made on the Howey test & an accurate description of the law. https://www.sec.gov/...
SEC Chair Gary Gensler has asked a large part of the crypto community to “Come in, talk to us, and register.” They may not be interested. He is asking the crypto community to embrace regulation, or risk being sued. https://www.cnbc.com/...
#bitcoin maxis in complete shock and utter disbelief as SEC accepts that ETH isn't a security another idiotic narrative officially dead https://twitter.com/...