The head of Wall Street’s top derivatives regulator urged lawmakers to give his agency more authority and a bigger budget to oversee trading in the fast-growing cryptocurrency market.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam said on Wednesday that an increase of at least a $100 million to the regulator’s annual budget of about $300 million could be needed for the added responsibilities. The CFTC’s current role of policing derivatives based on Bitcoin and Ether and investigating fraud or manipulation in underlying crypto markets positions the agency to take on a bigger role, Behnam said.
