Chairman of the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Rostin Behnam has called Ethereum a commodity and not a security, in apparent contrast to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler who has consistently argued that every cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin falls under securities laws.

Behnam, speaking to the Senate Agriculture Committee in a Wednesday hearing, argued that Ethereum had been listed on CFTC exchanges for quite some time, and that creates a “direct jurisdictional hook” for the agency to police both ETH’s derivatives market and the underlying market.

“We would not have allowed the Ether futures product to be listed on a CFTC exchange if we did not feel strongly that it was a commodity asset,” he added.

(By DYLAN BUTTS)