US CFTC’s Behnam Will Testify at FTX Hearing in Senate

Rostin Behnam, the chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will testify at a Senate hearing next week set to examine the “lessons learned from the FTX collapse,” according to a listing on the Senate Agriculture Committee’s website.

The panel is set for a Dec. 1 hearing, though it’s unclear what company officials may be included on the final roster of witnesses. Behnam is the first witness posted online.

The CFTC chairman had given serious public consideration to a FTX proposal to offer direct clearing of crypto derivatives – even hosting a roundtable at which former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried made his case – until the company imploded this month and withdrew the application.

The Agriculture Committee announced the hearing the same day it published a defense of the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, a bill supported by Bankman-Fried. Industry participants have expressed concern over whether the bill might harm decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Meanwhile, the committee said Monday that regulated entities under the FTX umbrella were able to weather the exchange's collapse.

The House Financial Services Committee has also said it’ll hold a hearing on FTX.