Senator Toomey: Crypto is ‘sufficiently different’ from stocks or bonds

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) a ranking member of the US Senate Banking Committee says Congress needs to step in on the issue of cryptocurrency regulation.

Particularly, Sen. Toomey points to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), through its Chair Gary Gensler,  hasn’t provided anything as much as regulatory clarity on how existing frameworks on securities apply to cryptocurrencies.

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This, he told Bloomberg in an interview, is despite repeated comments from Gensler that have labelled pretty much every other crypto a security, except for Bitcoin (BTC) that’s deemed a commodity.

“I think the problem is that the SEC isn’t sharing with us the framework that they’re using. Gary Gensler famously argues that virtually all crypto tokens are securities. I think reasonable people can disagree with that.”

Crypto is ‘unlike’ stocks and bonds

On crypto versus their regulation compared to stocks and bonds, the legislator noted Gensler’s exemption of Bitcoin from the securities classification does not do much in the way of explaining the agency’s approach to everything else that the SEC Chair says is a security.

“He doesn’t go on to say how we would apply the existing frameworks that we used to regulate securities issuance and trading to a very, very new and very different technology where some of these things don’t fit – like custody rules, clearance rules.”

According to the lawmaker, Gensler’s failure to provide any clarity on how to fit existing securities laws to crypto should be a reason for Congress to come into the picture.

“I think actually Congress should step in and provide some guidance. I think crypto is sufficiently different. Even if you want to argue that these tokens are securities, you need to make the argument. But you can’t dispute that they’re very different from a stock or a bond. And therefore Congress ought to step in and provide a framework.”

The Pennsylvania lawmaker added that he was working on the need to have Congress take a decision. Although that is likely going to be “really hard to get done in the meantime.”

According to him, the SEC Chairman has to offer much more clarity regarding the “how and why he intends to apply” the regulations on crypto.

The senator’s remarks come on the day the ambitious Ethereum (ETH) upgrade “the Merge,” as comprehensively analysed by Invezz, finally happened after a long wait.

Gensler’s past remarks saw James Butterfill, CoinShares head of research, tell Bloomberg earlier today that political (and perhaps regulatory interference) could be Ethereum’s biggest drawbacks going forward.