CFTC Preparing to Oversee Crypto, Behnam Tells Senators

At the same time, SEC Chair Gary Gensler doubled down on his stance that crypto tokens are securities

share

key takeaways

  • Two Senate committees heard from regulators, interested parties about crypto regulation Thursday
  • Gensler said that the “vast majority” of crypto tokens are securities

In the Senate’s latest overture to crafting cryptocurrency regulation, two committee meetings on Thursday demonstrated that jurisdictional industry guidelines are still very much still up in the air.

The Senate Agriculture Committee heard from Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Rostin Behnam and other cryptocurrency and banking industry professionals — while SEC Chair Gary Gensler appeared before the Senate Banking Committee. 

Behnam told senators the CFTC has already started preparing to become the crypto industry’s watchdog. 

“The volatility in the market, and its impact on retail customers — which may only worsen under current macroeconomic conditions – emphasizes the immediate need for regulatory clarity and market protections,” Behnam said in prepared remarks to the Agriculture Committee. 

Gensler, who appeared before the Banking Committee at the same time, doubled down on his view that most crypto tokens and companies will have to work with his agency in some capacity. 

“Of the nearly 10,000 tokens in the crypto market, I believe the vast majority are securities. Offers and sales of these thousands of crypto security tokens are covered by the securities laws, which require that these transactions be registered or made pursuant to an available exemption,” Gensler said in prepared remarks. “Thus, I’ve asked the SEC staff to work directly with entrepreneurs to get their tokens registered and regulated, where appropriate, as securities.” 

The message was in line with remarks Gensler made ahead of the hearing. The SEC head said earlier this month he would support the CFTC overseeing cryptos that can be classified as commodities, namely bitcoin. 

Agriculture Committee Chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and committee member Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., presented legislation in August — the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act — that would place commodities under the CFTC’s jurisdiction. The bill only mentions bitcoin and ether as commodities and does not elaborate on the classification process.

“We are at a crossroads when it comes to crypto,” Christine Parker, vice president and deputy general counsel for Coinbase, said during the second panel before the Agriculture Committee. 

Parker emphasized the need for clearer definitions and classifications, adding that digital asset commodities should be regulated by the CFTC and not through enforcement actions by the SEC. This appeared to be a nod toward Coinbase’s latest battle with the SEC over the classification of nine tokens as securities. 

Despite ongoing discussions around jurisdiction, the agencies maintain they are committed to working together and share the same goals. 

“The two agencies work very collaboratively,” ​​Valerie Szczepanik, director of the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (FinHub) office at the SEC, said during a panel discussion at the Digital Asset Summit in New York Tuesday. “From my perspective, the agencies really want to get it right. It’s all about investor protection and market integrity and our two agencies want to cover the landscape so those goals are achieved.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday

article-image

The government says Storm was a money-hungry aid to criminals; the defense says it’s not his fault that people used his code for illicit activities.

article-image

EigenLayer, Lido and Taiko are buying verifiable compute

article-image

Sam Altman sees our future through the World Orb

article-image

Few US politicians are this clearheaded about Bitcoin

article-image

Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis