Commodities regulator opens its own digital-asset track without waiting for Congress
The CFTC has begun consulting on spot-market oversight, signalling it will not hold its rulemaking hostage to a stalled bill.
WASHINGTON —
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has begun formal consultation on how registered exchanges could list spot digital-asset products, a step that puts the agency on a parallel track to the securities regulator's own crypto rulemaking.
Officials have framed the effort as filling a gap rather than claiming turf. Futures on the largest digital assets have traded on regulated venues for years; the spot markets that set their reference prices remain supervised mainly through state money-transmission law and anti-money-laundering rules.
The consultation asks for comment on custody arrangements, on how a venue should establish that a listed asset is not a security, and on surveillance-sharing with offshore platforms where much of the price discovery happens. Those questions overlap uncomfortably with the securities regulator's, which is the practical cost of two agencies moving at once.
Market participants broadly welcomed the move while noting the risk that firms will end up complying with two incomplete regimes. "Certainty from one agency is worth something," said a compliance officer at a registered venue. "Certainty from two that disagree is worth less than people think."