It seems that crypto regulation has been on everyone’s lips in recent days. President Clinton warned against overly tight regulation at Ripple‘s Swell conference while American crypto leaders met with lawmakers in Capitol Hill to voice their concerns on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approach towards digital assets.

The SEC is the most crucial political institution for the crypto industry and it is yet to develop a clear and effective policy on how it should be regulated. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is arguably the second governmental institution in terms of importance for the crypto sphere and its chairman has recently shared his outlook on the upcoming crypto regulation in an interview with CNBC.

Chris Giancarlo revealed that CFTC is more focused on consumer protection, rather than spurring innovation, saying that, “We’re very focused on the fraud and manipulation aspects of cryptocurrency markets right now.“ He then went on to add that the Commission won a case in Boston court last week, which allowed the agency to pursue charges against those, responsible for crypto-related fraud.

The interviewer then alluded that US is not sufficiently encouraging crypto innovation and it might move overseas, to which Mr. Giancarlo disagreed. The CFTC chairman alluded to BTC derivatives with bitcoin futures trading on CME and CBOE, saying “we’re ahead of the world in that.” However, despite a number of areas where the US is leading, there are other crypto innovation sectors, where D.C. regulators should take a “more thoughtful and intelligent approach”, said Mr. Giancarlo, reminding of the innovation-centric Congress approach 20 years ago, during the internet boom.

Crypto aficionados often accuse regulators of stubbornness and inability to adapt current laws to the emerging technology. Mr. Giancarlo reminded that both SEC and CFTC operate on statutes written in the 1930s thus it is extremely difficult to implement some kind of quick fix. However, the chairman assured that “we are trying to re-purpose for a new innovation that didn’t exist earlier.“ Earlier this year, he said that the CFTC is four years behind its corresponding agencies in other countries.

Finally, when asked for a prediction, Giancarlo was quite bullish, claiming that, “I think that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. I think that there is a future for them. I am not sure if they will ever come to rival the dollar or other hard currencies, but there is a whole section of the world that is hungry for functioning currencies.“

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