Rostin Behnam, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said on Wednesday that a regulatory model dominated by the CFTC could have a major impact on the cryptocurrency space, including driving up the price of bitcoin.
Rostin Behnam told attendees in a fireside chat at NYU Law School:
If we can be properly regulated, this field has the potential to grow. If there were a CFTC-regulated market, the price of Bitcoin might double.
For many years, the CFTC and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been competing with each other for the responsibility of regulating cryptocurrencies. Neither side is willing to issue too many formal guidelines for cryptocurrency companies. law enforcement actions.
Rostin Behnam believes that it is necessary to provide a clear regulatory system for cryptocurrency market participants, so that more institutional investors can be attracted to the cryptocurrency market.
Rostin Behnam said that the CFTC currently faces overlapping jurisdictions in the cryptocurrency market, coupled with limited operating budgets, which affect the CFTC’s ability to effectively respond to cryptocurrency crimes.
He continued that the CFTC’s current enforcement actions are just the tip of the iceberg, and that the agency has brought about 60 cases, all of which relied on whistleblowers, customer complaints and leads provided to it. Rostin Behnam added,
We do not have traditional monitoring tools, market surveillance tools to monitor trading platforms, regulate broker-dealers or similar intermediaries. These are things that we lack, not because of lack of effort, but because of lack of jurisdiction.
