Industry leaders have said that despite the two approvals of crypto-exchange traded products by the US in this year, there’s still work to do.
“If you zoom out, the fact that we got two different types of crypto exchange-traded funds in the marketplace this year actually means that it’s maybe been the biggest year for regulatory advancement that we’ve seen,” Teddy Fusaro is the president of Bitwise. He spoke during a Wednesday panel discussion in New York at the DACOM Event.
“Now, whether or not the [Securities and Exchange Commission] really wanted to do that or if their hand was maybe forced, based on what happened in the courts, is another story,” Fusaro also added that he was referring to Grayscale’s recent victory in the federal appeals court over SEC.
Panelists at the Solidus Labs hosted event focused on the needs of the industry to grow and attract institutional players.
“These products were a watershed moment,” Chris Tierno is deputy general counsel for Gemini and spoke about both spot bitcoin ETFs as well as ethereum. “When I think about institutionalization, I think about buyers, sellers, infrastructure providers and regulators all working in a concerted effort to build an industry.”
Tierno says that this last step is crucial when it comes onboarding players who are traditional.
“When we start approaching our partners in the industry, they don’t want to risk their primary source of their business for what could potentially be five or 10% revenues; they’re not going to put that at risk for a product that doesn’t have certainty,” He said. “So we really need to work closely with the regulators.”
These comments follow a key note address delivered by Caroline Pham, CFTC Commissioner and Summer Mersinger on Wednesday. They are well-known for their dissenting views on crypto enforcement measures brought by the CFTC. The two expressed their frustration at the current agenda of their agency.
“There’s this broader issue with the trend the CFTC has taken in its enforcement priorities, which is that we are increasingly bringing cases for registration or compliance violations instead of focusing on true bad actors — people who are lying, cheating or stealing,” Pham stated.
Pham, earlier in the month, issued a dissenting statement after the CFTC agreed to settle charges brought against Uniswap regarding alleged violation of commodity law. Pham said that the final decision of the commission was “legally simplistic.”
Mersinger said in her own dissenting view that going after Uniswap was a misguided usage of agency resources. This is especially true given the fact that there had been no allegations made by commissioners about harm being done to market participants or customers.
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