Former US official says ETH could be a security and a commodity at the same time

▶ Dan Berkowitz believes that Ethereum falls under the jurisdiction of the SEC and the CFTC

Regulators may consider that Ethereum is both a security and a commodity. This statement was made by the former commissioner of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Dan Berkowitz.

The former official also noted that ETH falls under the jurisdiction of both US regulators, the SEC and the CFTC.

“The law is clear. In fact, something can be both a commodity and a security,” he said.

So far, politicians have not come to a consensus on Ethereum. The CFTC has repeatedly called the second most popular cryptocurrency a commodity and said that it is their department that should regulate this digital asset. The SEC leadership, on the contrary, is confident that control over ETH should be left to him, and all crypto coins are securities.

According to Berkowitz, the misunderstanding with the definitions arises from the fact that goods are not exclusively material objects. However, anything that falls under the scope of a “future contract” can actually be categorized as a commodity.

The former CFTC commissioner also pointed out that formally the security includes bills and investment contracts, falling under the jurisdiction of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“This is a rather strange question: “Is this digital asset a security or not?”. I think you should be asking, “Is it being sold as part of a securities deal?” It depends on the facts and circumstances,” says Berkowitz.

At the end of last year, the current head of the CFTC, Rostin Benam, said that the introduction of innovative products would not be a “free circumvention” of regulation for cryptocurrency market players. The official also opined that BTC and ETH are commodities.

“What I advocated and what Congress asked for was to very clearly define the oversight of commodity tokens,” Benham said at the time.