Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler has confirmed in a recent interview with CNBC that Bitcoin is a virtual commodity. Notably, he declined to comment on the status of any other cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin: the Only Commodity?
In an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Gensler was probed as to whether he was collaborating with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in relation to the regulation of cryptocurrencies.
The significance? While the SEC focuses on securities regulation, the CFTC (as its name implies) is responsible for regulating commodities such as oil, gold, silver or wheat. According to Gensler, and his predecessors, you can add Bitcoin to that list:
Some, like Bitcoin, and that’s the only one, Jim, I’m going to say because I’m not going to talk about any one of these tokens, my predecessors and others have said, they’re a commodity.
Gary Gensler, chair, SEC
Interestingly, former SEC chair Jay Clayton argued that Ethereum was a commodity, saying it was sufficiently decentralised. However, when pressed, Gensler refused to provide a direct response.
Gensler’s view, expressed during his tenure teaching blockchain at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is that Ethereum’s ICO (initial coin offering) passed the “Howey Test”, a legal precedent used to classify securities:
Given the time passed, Ethereans have argued that the network is now sufficiently decentralised to constitute a commodity, although Gensler has thus far refused to provide an official view.
Bitcoiners remain convinced that Bitcoin is the only commodity, a view that MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has repeatedly stated:
A quick scan of Twitter reveals that the general sentiment among Bitcoiners is that if you raised money, and/or you have a foundation, leader or CEO, it is a security and cannot be regarded as decentralised:
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