There’s good news for Ethereum traders and investors, and now they can celebrate over it as the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is ready to accept Ethereum futures, internal officers of CFTC mentioned.
In December, last year, the US CFTC had held a market feedback forum. The CFTC issued a ‘Request for Input’ (RFI) and requested all blockchain based experts to understand more about the second largest cryptocurrency of the world, as per market cap and other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum network and ether. The form had various questioned related to blockchain technology, risks, use cases, markets, opportunities all concerning to Ethereum network and Ether. The ‘Request for Input’ signaled out the willingness of CFTC to sanction Ethereum futures.
As of now, Ethereum is an unregulated crypto asset, once CFTC sanctions Ethereum futures, Ethereum will come directly within the federal jurisdiction.
The CFTC controls the US derivative markets, and it had permitted bitcoin futures markets to introduce at the end of 2017, the increase of bitcoin price to $20,000 mark is due to the sanction of Bitcoin future. As of now, Cboe Global Exchange and CME Group have offered funds to Bitcoin Futures.
With the approval of Bitcoin futures, the regulator is looking ahead to control another similar ethereum product, authorities mentioned.
“I think we can get comfortable with an ether derivative being under our jurisdiction,” the person stated.
The official further added that they don’t make strong statements; what we do is examine the applications that are before us.
He briefed saying that a derivative exchange reaches to us and tells us that we seek to introduce this specific product and if they arrive at us with a specific derivative that meets our requirements, then I believe that the derivative will have a good opportunity of getting approved or self-certified by the regulator.
The CFTC is the federal body that looks into cryptocurrency regulations. CFTC is a bit more generous in its approach as compared to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Meanwhile, the officials of CFTC said that they might only respond to a particular application that is placed before the federal bodies instead of freely giving opinion, the person mentioned.
If a regulated futures product is planned and sanctioned, then Ethereum futures might get a fresh round of institutional money within the Ethereum ecosystem.
John Todaro, digital currency research director of Tradeblock, a financial software provider, said that most investments have mandates which do not permit them to purchase the virtual currency.
Looking over the long term operation, he mentioned that a CFTC monitored futures market could bring more confidence within regulators like that of SEC and may enable to open opportunity for ETF- a fund traded over the stock market and may bring in more liquidity to ethereum.
Increase in the institutional cash flow will in-turn support retail investors, John mentioned.
Few people even discussed that the bitcoin price might be harmed due to futures, responding to this John said bitcoin value had reached its highest level and the sanction of futures just happened at that time.
Earlier, the chairman of CFTC, Chris Giancarlo said that the US is ahead of any other country in the world, but there are few areas where we need to apply a thoughtful approach.
