SEC has no authority over crypto, CFTC commissioner argues

Amid the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) expanding the scope of oversight of the cryptocurrency industry, a commissioner with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) argued that crypto regulation doesn’t fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction.

CFTC commissioner Brian Quintenz took to Twitter on Wednesday to declare that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) should be regulated by the CFTC rather than the SEC.

Quintenz stressed that cryptocurrencies are commodities and thus fall under the CFTC’s jurisdiction, as opposed to securities that are regulated by the SEC, stating:

“Just so we’re all clear here, the SEC has no authority over pure commodities or their trading venues, whether those commodities are wheat, gold, oil….or crypto assets.”

Quintenz’s remarks came just about half an hour after former CFTC chairman Christopher Giancarlo made a similar statement on Twitter, arguing that the CFTC is the only U.S. regulatory agency that has experience regulating markets for Bitcoin and crypto.

“If the Biden Administration is serious about sensible cryptocurrency regulation, it needs to nominate a CFTC chairman,” Giancarlo noted.

Only one US regulatory agency has experience regulating markets for #Bitcoin & #Crypto and it is not @SECGov. It is @CFTC. If #BidenAdministration is serious about sensible #Cryptocurrency #regulation, it needs to nominate a CFTC #chairman.

— Chris Giancarlo (@giancarloMKTS) August 4, 2021

The U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, a standing committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, subsequently supported Quintenz’s statement. The committee’s official Twitter account argued that crypto is “bigger than the SEC,” and the Congress “needs to write the rules of the road to protect investors and innovation in the digital economy.”

Related: ‘Nakamoto’s innovation is real,’ says SEC Chair Gary Gensler

The new statements apparently come in response to recent remarks by the SEC chairman Gary Gensler calling for increased regulatory oversight of the crypto industry to expand the regulatory scope with decentralized exchanges. Gensler reportedly outlined that there’s been much discussion about what kind of digital assets should fall under the SEC’s purview as the authority previously confirmed that major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) were not securities.