The US Senate Agriculture Committee (SAC) plans to introduce a bill classifying bitcoin as a digital commodity.
Digital commodity
This category is fairly new. The question of what exactly bitcoin is has been around for years. Does it fall under securities laws; is it a commodity, or is it in a class of its own?
Currently, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversees the regulation of commodity derivatives rather than the underlying commodity itself. On the other hand, the SEC has so far focused mainly on crypto-currencies.
U.S. senators have introduced the “Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022” to empower the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) “with exclusive jurisdiction over the digital commodities spot market.”
Digital ##Bitcoin ##BTC ##ETH #https://t.co/AyhN7ai9sa pic.twitter.com/MpIkaQmOOJ— TokenAndCrypto.com (@tokenandcrypto) August 5, 2022
With the bill, SAC wants the CFTC to also regulate the spot market for digital commodities. This means that the regulator will also have responsibility for trading in the underlying commodity — that is, Bitcoin. At least, that is the idea of this proposal.
No securities
The bill also excludes securities from being designated as a digital commodity at the same time. Therefore, all cryptocurrencies that are labelled as a security will fall under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) instead of the CFTC. Therefore, the SEC will mainly focus on crypto exchanges as securities exchanges.
Better definitions for brokers, dealers, custodians, and similar parties are also needed.
SAC Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow and Republican John Boozman, want to introduce the bill as soon as possible. CFTC chairman Rostin Behnam states that the regulator is ready for this step.
Therefore, it is a bill, a bill. This means that it is not (yet) a law that will be implemented.
