The CFTC head reiterates the future of stablecoins and ether

At a recent Senate hearing, the chairman of the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reiterated that stablecoins and ether are commodities and therefore fall under its jurisdiction. When using the founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, in the middle of December, the CFTC claimed that some digital assets, such as Ether (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), and Tether (USDT), were commodities.

Excluding Ether, Bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency that could be seen as a commodity during an invitation-only event at Princeton University in November of last year. He had already argued that Ether might also be considered a commodity a month earlier.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC, asserted in an interview with New York Magazine on February 23 that “anything other than Bitcoin” is security. A number of cryptocurrency lawyers rejected this assertion, and Behnam’s most recent remarks go against Gensler’s point of view.

As each competes for regulatory control of the cryptocurrency economy, the divergent perspectives of the market regulators might pave the way for confrontation. The SEC asserted its jurisdiction against Paxos, the company that issues Binance USD (BUSD), saying that it may sue the company for violating investor protection laws because Binance USD (BUSD) is an unregistered security.

At the same time, the SEC targeted Terraform Laboratories and deemed its algorithm-based stablecoin, TerraUSD Classic (USTC), a security. According to Gabriel Shapiro, general counsel of Delphi Labs, this action could serve as a “roadmap” for future SEC legal actions against other stablecoin issuers.

The sector has reacted negatively to the SEC’s crackdowns on cryptocurrencies. Circle founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire stated he doesn’t think “the SEC is the regulator for stablecoins” and that they should be supervised by a banking regulator instead.

Analysis of the popular Staking goods in the PoS era in Ether 2.0

In recent years, there has been a clear transition in the consensus layer of blockchain from PoW (Proof of Work) to PoS (Proof of Stake, Proof of Interest, or Proof of Pledge).

Together with Ether switching from PoW to PoS, only BTC, DOGE, and LTC continue to use PoW consensus out of the top 15 public chains in terms of market capitalization, with the majority of the other public chains using PoS consensus. The top ten PoS public chains can achieve an average pledge yield of more than 7% and have pledged more than $180 billion together.

In essence, staking can only change the number of coins held, and even after accounting for staking’s cryptocurrency income, it is difficult to ignore the impact of the coin’s price. However, if the coin’s price and its associated cryptocurrency income are both favorable for the user holding the coin, staking can have a significant gaining effect. Staking can minimize losses when the value of the coin declines.