Congress will likely decide the fate of crypto jurisdiction — Lummis staffer

A staffer for United States Senator Cynthia Lummis believes that if the dispute between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over who should regulate crypto currencies cannot be resolved internally, the United States Congress will have to step in and resolve the dispute.

The issue stems from 2014, when the CFTC first asserted jurisdiction over virtual currencies. This was later reaffirmed in 2018 by a US Federal Court ruling stating that the CFTC has the authority to prosecute offenders in fraud cases involving virtual currencies. To date, however, it has been the SEC that has predominantly investigated US-based crypto exchanges and crypto assets. On Wednesday, Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow and Arkansas Senator John Boozman introduced the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022 (DCCPA). If the bill is passed by the US legislature, the CFTC would be granted the right to regulate digital commodities. Most importantly, the DCCPA would classify both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) as digital commodities, not securities. This is particularly important because SEC chairman Gary Gensler recently said in an interview with US business news channel CNBC that BTC is the only cryptocurrency he has no problem with being labeled a commodity: "Bitcoin and some - and that's all I'm going to say because I'm not going to talk about any of these tokens, but my predecessors and others have said they're a commodity." But despite the tension, Lummis' staffer thinks the DCCPA bill has less than a 50% chance of passing this year: "The only way either bill will pass this year is if a catastrophic 'black swan' event, such as a major US stock market crash, brings lawmakers together." The news comes after the SEC began investigating the $20 billion crypto exchange Coinbase, but Lummis' staff also noted that every US-based crypto exchange is under investigation in some form.   Source: cointelegraph