CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert has mentioned ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is a commodity.

Speaking on the Yahoo! Finance All Markets Summit Thursday, Tarbert mentioned he believes ether is just not a safety.

“We’ve been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity. We haven’t said anything about ether – until now,” Tarbert mentioned. “It is my deem chairman of the CFTC that ether is a commodity.”

Tarbert continued to say the CFTC is working with the SEC on the 2 cryptocurrencies and have united each will not be securities.Going ahead, the CFTC power permit ether futures to commerce on U.S. markets, he prompt.

Concerning currencies created by exhausting forks, Tarbert mentioned the CFTC’s therapy of every new coin ought to rely upon its creation.

The chairman mentioned:

“It stands to reason that similar pluss should be treated similarly. If the underlying plus, the original digital plus, hasn’t been determined to be a security and is therefore a commodity, most likely the forked plus will be the same. Unless the fork itself raises some securities law issues under it classic Howey Test.”

The feedback maintain implications for ethereum-based monetary merchandise similar to ethereum futures. In May, a senior CFTC official educated CoinDesk the company was able to O.K. an ethereum futures contract if it met the right situations.

Tarbert additive self-addressed the Facebook-led Libra venture, expression the main federal regulators are wanting on the deliberate stablecoin and it has but to be definite whether or not it falls into the safety classification.

“Is it a security, first and foremost. And if it isn’t a security, it is most likely a commodity,” he mentioned.