The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Heath Tarbert has given a hint about the classification of Ether (ETH), as he believes the second most popular cryptocurrency is a commodity.
Tarbert, who made this known at a Yahoo Finance All Market Summit, held today, stated his stance on ETH as a commodity.
“We’ve been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity. We haven’t said anything about ether – until now. It is my view as chairman of the CFTC that Ether is a commodity,” Tarbert said.
He went further to say that ether derivatives will be approved by the commission to trade on the U.S. market in the near future.
However, widespread reports in May suggested that the CFTC will only approve an ethereum-like future contract if it meets the necessary conditions.
The CFTC boss did not fail to acknowledge the importance of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry.
Interestingly, he urges the U.S. to replicate the energy given to other technological revolutions on the blockchain and crypto industry, and take the front seat in these industries.
Speaking about cryptocurrencies developed via hard forks, Tarbert noted that regulators should treat each crypto based on how the token was created.
“It stands to reason that similar assets should be treated similarly. If the underlying asset, the original digital asset, hasn’t been determined to be a security and is, therefore, a commodity, most likely, the forked asset will be the same,” he added.
Tarbert also indicated that financial regulators are having a close look at Facebook’s proposed Libra Project to determine whether or not it should be classified as a security.
In early June, Coinfomania reported that the CFTC held talks with the Libra team in order to discover whether the Libra token would come under the agency’s regulatory purview.
Сryptocurrencies have been one of the most challenging assets to classify, as financial regulators are still finding it difficult to determine a transparent approach to classify cryptos as a security or commodity.
