At the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) the United States recognized the cryptocurrencies Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) as a "commodity".
On November 30, the head of the CFTC, Rostin Behnam, said that only bitcoin is a commodity, so all other digital assets should be classified as securities.
However, his subordinates do not agree with this point of view. In the lawsuit filed against Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX crypto exchange and its subsidiary Alameda Research, CFTC employees indicated the following:
"Some digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and others, are commodities, according to Section 1a(9) of the Securities Act."
Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler explained the emergence of contradictions in determining the status of ETH by the evolution of the cryptocurrency project. According to him, due to the ICO in 2014, Ethereum turned out to be a security, then due to the high degree of decentralization of the blockchain, altcoin turned into a commodity.
However, after the network switched to the PoS consensus algorithm in September 2022, the blocked assets turned out to be securities again. Thus, now ETH, which is in circulation, represents a commodity, and the coins on the stake belong to securities.
