CFTC and SEC have moved ahead to have expressed their respective standpoints in line with the senate hearing on virtual currencies. CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo and SEC Chairman Jay Clayton are said to have forwarded their testimonies via writing. Anyone that has the opportunity to go through the testimonies will attest to the fact that they gave a vivid revelation as to where U.S. regulation of “virtual currencies” is headed.
The SEC chairman has termed the topic of regulating ICOs and related trading activities a rather special topic. He added that the markets were international, national and local. The big names here are the distributed ledger, the ICOs and crypto currencies.
It was rather evident from the chairman’s statement that he was in support of the various blockchain technology startups alleviating inefficiencies in market regulatory frameworks. However, it was easy to tell that he was less enthusiastic about both ICOs and cryptocurrencies. According to him, these were basically subsets of products that sought to leverage on the commercial opportunities presented by blockchain.
Clayton believes that Cryptocurrencies might at one point in time be promoted to serve as the replacement for dollars. The ICOs in this particular case are seen as form of stock offering.
Clayton has closely been following up on those who have been promoting virtual currencies and one thing that has been coming out clearly is the fact that it might be getting cheaper and easier to purchase as well as sell goods especially across borders.
Clayton believes that it is crucial to move ahead and reduce or eliminate transaction fees and costs. However, the assertion hasn’t been resulting in much in terms of positive change.
There are a number of people who have come up to launch arguments with most of them taking the strong stand that the chairman’s opening commentary was not at all favorable. They in a major way questioned his stance on ICOs but it is worth noting that a lot of people view initial coin offerings as forms of securities offerings. Indeed it is a coin but if it is also able to function as a form of security then there is no issue terming it a security.
