Heath Tarbert, the Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has revealed he believes ether (ETH) futures contracts will be launched in 2020.
Speaking at a fireside chat during the first day of the DC Fintech Week, Tarbert revealed he believes ether futures contracts could soon launch, saying it’s “likely that you would see a futures contract in the next six months to a year.”
The CFTC, as reported, declared ether a commodity earlier this month and revealed the agency would be willing to approve ETH futures contracts. At the time, Tarbert said:
We've been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity. We haven't said anything about ether—until now. It is my view as chairman of the CFTC that ether is a commodity.
During the fireside chat, according to CoinDesk, Tarbert noted that to his knowledge no company has, so far, applied to launch ether futures contracts, even though the CFTC is open to approving such a product. Approval will, nevertheless, depend on the application itself.
Tarbert also revealed other cryptocurrencies may soon be seen as commodities, and there other crypto derivatives are coming soon. As there are thousands of cryptoasset out there, it’s unclear which he may have been referring to, if any.
The CFTC Chairman added that an asset can evolve from a commodity to a security and vice versa, although when asked he revealed there may not be a precedent to this happening. The Securities and Exchange Commission, he said, is the entity that determines when an asset is a security.
The SEC has notably been cracking down on initial coin offering (ICO) projects in the last few months, It recently filed an emergency action against Telegram for issuing its Gram tokens without registering with it, and earlier sued messaging app Kik for allegedly running an illegal securities offering that raised $100 million, in which it issued its KIN token.
Featured image by Chris Liverani on Unsplash.
