Darren Soto, The United States congressman, has expressed his opinion in one his interview on the financial news channel, Cheddar, stating that most cryptocurrency should be eliminated from the regulatory guidelines issued under the country’s securities regulator. He further suggested that crypto should be supervised by the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) instead of classifying them as securities under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) charge.
Soto is also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the 9th District of Florida. Soto along with Ted Budd led the bilateral effort to endorse an exhaustive and crypto-friendly regulatory environment in the country.
Supporting his stand on the need for better clarity on the agencies’ jurisdiction and to prepare adequate classifications within the cryptocurrencies, Soto mentioned that applying federal securities laws “can be very intense and hurt the market unless it is truly secure.”
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He added by stating that “We’ll be saving the SEC for true securities, knowing predominantly that these are commodities and currency transactions. The [CFTC and FTC] are agencies with a lighter touch, and we have grown consensus among the industry that they’d be appropriate for the majority of these types of cryptocurrency transactions and the nature of these assets.”
To maintain the United States’ global competitiveness, Soto has created his case against heavy-handed regulation thereby admitting the positive efforts to encourage the crypto industry in countries such as Malta and Barbados. Soto commented “We have sometimes taken for granted that the U.S. dollar is the foundation of the world economy, and how that creates stability and advantage […] As cryptocurrency becomes more utilized, that advantage could go away… [we] need to make sure we are aggressive and a fertile place for cryptocurrency transactions and technology companies to be here.”
Currently, as the US does not have any such regulatory organizations that administer the crypto regulation, the regulators are still not clear whether it would be correct to categorize virtual currencies with commodities or with securities.
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The CFTC has identified few chief cryptocurrencies that should be enlisted under commodities such as Bitcoin (BTC). Many prominent U.S. regulators have claimed that those tokens which are sold through the process of initial coin offerings (ICO) should be considered as securities and should be under the jurisdiction of the SEC.
