Regulators have an “pressing function to play” in overseeing digital belongings together with cryptocurrencies, based on the pinnacle of the Securities Business & Monetary Markets Affiliation, a viewpoint that has solely turn into extra obvious within the wake of the FTX collapse.
SIFMA president and CEO Ken Bentsen pressured the necessity for such oversight throughout a “state of the trade” presentation and dialog with James Reynolds, Jr., the chairman and CEO of Loop Capital Markets and chair of SIFMA’s Board of Administrators.
Whereas Bentsen mentioned he was unaware of the particulars behind FTX’s travails past what’s public data, from his vantage level there had been a “clear lack of the normal compliance regime” that applies within the securities and commodities markets, together with the shopper safety rule, segregation of belongings and buyer funds, and books and information necessities, in addition to prohibitions of conflicts of curiosity and the co-mingling of funds.
To Bentsen, the FTX controversy underscored the necessity to impose regulation of digital belongings comparable to those who its members at present function below as regards securities, and that may be constructed off current regulatory frameworks.
“We’ve got a precept that it actually needs to be guided by ‘identical exercise, identical threat, identical regulatory end result,’” Bentsen mentioned. “We’ve got an current framework which works fairly nicely, that we predict could be utilized, maybe with some applicable tailoring, to those new varieties of belongings.”
Cryptocurrency markets hit a disaster level final month after FTX, the world’s second-largest crypto alternate, led by Sam Bankman-Fried, was left excessive and dry after the crypto alternate Binance withdrew from its potential buy of the alternate. FTX traders moved to tug their funds, sending the alternate (and crypto markets) into chaos. Bankman-Fried has since given a variety of interviews with journalists whereas he stays within the Bahamas, and plenty of anticipate civil and legal fees might be forthcoming, together with higher pushes for regulation within the area.
Shortly earlier than Bentsen and Reynolds spoke, the Senate Agriculture Committee held a listening to on the fallout of FTX’s collapse, wherein Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee Chairman Rostin Behnam referred to as on legislators to move legal guidelines regulating crypto exchanges, based on the Wall Road Journal (the Journal additionally reported that Bankman-Fried had lobbied lawmakers in help of shifting crypto oversight in the direction of the CFTB and away from the SEC).
Moreover, every week after the FTX collapse, the Monetary Business Regulatory Authority (FINRA) launched a focused examination into how companies dealt with communications on “crypto asset services” between July 1 and September 2022.
When talking with Bentsen, Reynolds argued that SIFMA had been on the “vanguard” of calling for extra substantial regulatory oversight within the crypto area, and mentioned the group was trying ahead to working with the incoming Congress to take care of the difficulty.
“The FTX transaction has heightened the main focus by regulators, in addition to Congress on this concern,” he mentioned. “And the variety of particular person, unsophisticated retail traders which might be on this market with out ample safety has given us a pathway to have a transparent, sturdy dialogue with these which might be going to be chargeable for this space.”