The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently stated that ether is a commodity and therefore falls under the CFTC's jurisdiction. While the CFTC had previously announced its view that bitcoin was a commodity, this was its first official statement on ether, and it comports with the position of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that neither bitcoin nor ether is a security. The CFTC chairman also stated that "forked" assets – cryptocurrencies created by forks from the original cryptocurrency (e.g., bitcoin cash or bitcoin gold) – should be treated by regulators the same way as the original asset.

In capital markets news, earlier this week trading platform eToro launched a new portfolio that trades cryptocurrencies based on AI analyses of Twitter posts (tweets). In the foreign markets, late last week, SE Digital Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of a leading Thai financial services firm, obtained SEC approval to operate in Thailand as an initial coin offering portal. The company plans to launch the country's first investment token with a target transaction size of between two and three billion Thai Baht. Also last week, a major Australian precious metals company announced the launch of the Perth Mint Gold Token, a digital token backed 1:1 by GoldPass certificates issued by the Perth Mint, the world's largest refiner of newly mined gold.

Acceptance of cryptocurrency as a form of payment continues to increase. According to a major British online real estate portal and property website, the seller of a property in Durham County priced at 1.2 million British pounds will accept bitcoin as a method for payment. Additionally, a California-based luxury electric car automaker now accepts bitcoin as payment for car sales and services at its flagship store in Newport Beach. And the Bermuda government announced this week that it will accept payments for taxes, fees and other government services in USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin backed by U.S. dollars that was launched a year ago by a major cryptocurrency exchange and a U.S. fintech and cryptocurrency firm.

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