Dan Berkovitz: CFTC Is Working Hard on the Bakkt Application
U.S. CFTC commissioner Dan Berkovitz says the futures and options markets regulator is working hard on the Bakkt proposal. While he’s refused to provide an approval deadline, he did say that the agency is not anti-crypto or anti-blockchain.
CFTC Trying To Understand Blockchain
In a fireside chat with BLOCKTV, Berkovitz reassured the crypto community that the body is committed to freeing the market from fraud and manipulation rather than shooting down new technology. He states:
The CFTC is pro-innovation. We do not have an anti-crypto or an anti-blockchain attitude. We are not out to get new technology. We are out to get the bad guys.
He suggested that were the body to be a node on “the blockchain,” it would help them interact with the marketplace, as it would know the integrity of the records of players involved in the market. Being more closely involved with the technology would allow the body to understand what was happening and have enhanced insight into what various actors were doing.
Blockchain Poses Challenges To Regulators
Berkovitz says the CFTC’s regulatory structure faces unique challenges in dealing with blockchain technology. The body is charged with regulating specific entities and intermediaries that facilitate transactions. Thus, dealing with blockchain technology’s permissionless and decentralized nature poses problems for regulators that other new technologies wouldn’t.
Without any single point of control or authority over a market, the decentralized structure of permissionless blockchains means the normal targets of regulatory oversight and market participants are more difficult to regulate. However, he argues that regulations and systems are very flexible:
