Rostin Behnam, the chairman of the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency next to Bitcoin, is a commodity.

“It’s been listed on CFTC exchanges for quite some time, and for that reason,” Behnam said in a hearing, argued that it creates a “direct jurisdictional hook” for the agency to police both ETH’s derivatives market and the underlying market. 

Benham also commented on stablecoins, stating:

“I agree … that stablecoins are and should be … regulated financial instruments. Not withstanding a regulatory framework arounds stablecoin, they’re going to be commodities in my view.”

It seems that his viewpoint stands in direct opposition to that of the chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler, who contended last month that anything other than Bitcoin is subject to securities regulations. Although the chairman did not explicitly mention any cryptocurrencies, he has implied on numerous occasions that Ethereum could fall under this category, particularly since the platform shifted to a proof of stake consensus mechanism.