Congress has been urged by a commissioner of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to stop enabling cryptocurrency exchanges to “self-certify” and list tokens without regulation.
At a University of Pennsylvania lecture on FTX on January 18, CFTC commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero informed the audience that the current procedure was not sufficient to assure adequate regulations.
“It is critical to institute guardrails against regulatory arbitrage, and that includes prohibiting the use of the self-certification process,” said Goldsmith Romero.
The abrupt shutdown of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November has increased pressure on American regulators and lawmakers to bolster sector oversight. Additionally, the failure of FTX highlights the necessity for increased CFTC regulation while U.S. platforms are permitted to list cryptocurrency assets.
At the moment, cryptocurrency exchanges are able to “self-certify” the product’s safety prior to listing it, except if the CFTC rejects the listing within 24 hours. She stated that the procedure employed to list commodities like crypto futures is insufficient for that kind of asset.
Goldsmith Romero said that cryptocurrency companies seeking to issue tokens may be able to bypass registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by using the CFTC’s crypto regulatory framework.