Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Behnam has said the crypto market will remain unregulated unless the agency he led is given greater authority.
In a May 28 Bloomberg TV interview, Behnam sided with the crypto industry on its long-standing argument that cryptocurrencies are commodities.
โIf you look at existing law, the few largest tokens are commodities, which means the SEC does not have jurisdiction over those tokens, which include Bitcoin and Ether,โ he said.ย
He added that the Securities and Exchange Commission currently cannot properly regulate crypto because its law doesnโt allow it to regulate commodities, and the CFTC cannot regulate because it is a derivatives regulator.
Without new authority for the CFTC to regulate โcash markets in digital assets, non-securities,โ this will remain an unregulated space, he claimed.
Behnam comments amid increasing scrutiny of the Trump familyโs crypto ventures, which include the crypto platform World Liberty Financial, memecoins and a stablecoin.
On May 28, American political strategist and political commentator Sanders Townsend said Donald Trump is boosting his familyโs investments in cryptocurrency and โis using the presidency to do it.โ
The administrationโs involvement in the regulatory process and legislative effort is โraising red flagsโ among some members of Congress, and there are โwell-baked rulesโ for any elected or appointed government official that need to be complied with, he said.ย
โUltimately, until we do something, the [crypto] market will remain unregulated. Customers, investors, retail and institutional, will be more vulnerable to harm, fraud, manipulation and conflicts of interest, until the market is regulated.โย
Regulation critical to financial markets, says Behnam
Behnam also weighed in on Vice President JD Vanceโs speech at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, backing up the need for crypto regulations.ย
Related: Trumpโs use of presidential seal at memecoin event raises legal questions
Vance said in a speech at the event that โwe reject regulatorsโ and that crypto โhas a championโ in the White House.ย
โRegulators are extremely important,โ Behnam said. โTheyโre the reason American markets are the most desired in the world.โย
โConsumer protections and enforcement of the law are extremely critical to the health of our financial markets,โ he added.ย
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