Regulatory Series on Cryptocurrencies: CFTC Chair Highlights Regulatory Approach on Key Issues of Crypto-Assets At Harvard Kennedy School

While the SEC maintains the conservative approach on cryptocurrencies by constantly declining bitcoin ETF proposals and by stating ‘Bitcoin and Ethereum Are Not Securities’, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) has always been constructive on crypto-assets, recently, they said that Ether (ETH) is a commodity, hinting the room for a plethora of newly regulated derivatives products on platforms like the CBOE.

For now, during a lecture series covering financial regulations, Heath Tarbert, the chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, sheds some light on how the regulatory approach on digital currencies and stable coins tackling various key issues. While delivering his speech at Harvard Kennedy School, he highlighted the agency’s the prevailing regulatory approach on crypto-assets.

He responds in Q&A session, his team is on the verge of empathizing the entire gamut of cryptocurrencies figuring out the two of the key issues lingering within this industry.

“By and large, the two major problems, thus far, with the vast majority of crypto – or I should say ‘issues’ – are, number one, anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing. So these are things that could, if done wrongly, subvert our AML/CTF.

Hence, he referred to a recently issued joint statement by the FinCEN, the SEC and the CFTC essentially saying, ‘If you are one of our regulated entities, and even if you’re not dealing with products that we regulate, but you’re dealing with digital assets, cryptocurrencies, etc., you’ve got to apply the anti-money laundering laws, the Patriot Act, etc., to those. So we were very clear on that point.

In addition, he encompassed various other areas of financial regulations, such as, accounting principles, cross-border issues, rules-based and principle-based regulations, regulatory authorities and credit rating agencies track records while answering to a question pertaining to the importance of regulatory authorities during financial crisis.