Finance Experts Weigh Merging Regulatory Agencies to Tackle Cryptocurrencies

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2022 – Crypto market observers are calling for a change in the regulatory system and laws to tackle the quickly growing world of digital currencies.

“We will need new substantial law,” Douglas Elliott, financial regulation expert and partner at consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said on a panel hosted by the Federalist Society on Tuesday. “There are too many ambiguities” with the current regulatory system, he added.

As state and federal governments consider how the growing crypto industry should be regulated, various crypto experts further argued Tuesday for a redesign of the regulatory structure, while others said there was no need for a consolidation of agencies.

Part of the reasoning behind the consolidation is confusion about whether cryptocurrencies are commodities or securities. As such, some are recommending a merger between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to handle the regulation of the digital money.

“A lot of regulatory gaps exist because we have two regulators,” said Michael Piwowar, executive director at the Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets, suggesting that Congress merge the two into a single regulatory body.

Thomas Vartanian, executive director at the Financial Technology and Cybersecurity Center, backed the agency merger idea. Vartanian explained that despite the existence of cryptocurrencies for fourteen years, crypto remains largely unregulated.

“Bottom line is we’ve built a business of ten trillion dollars with no regulation and that is a financial risk,” Vartanian said. “We are building a financial time bomb.”

But Dawn Stump, former commissioner of the CFTC, said the best way to address these gaps in crypto regulation is not to redesign the regulatory system.

In August 2021, Stump said in a public statement that due to public misunderstanding about the CFTC’s regulatory oversight authority, “there has often been a grossly inaccurate oversimplification offered which suggests these are either securities regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission or commodities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.”