CFTC and SEC race on parallel crypto rulebooks

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on 5 October setting out two linked frameworks, Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM, that would bring crypto exchanges offering leverage under federal oversight.

The notice, announced in a CFTC press release, is an early step that seeks public input before formal rules are drafted. The public would have 60 days to comment once the notice appears in the Federal Register, which had not happened at the time of publication.

Two agencies, two rulebooks

The CFTC move runs alongside the Securities and Exchange Commission’s own crypto rulemaking. The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets in August and unveiled an innovation exemption for tokenised stocks last month, so two federal agencies are now writing parallel crypto rulebooks with no published plan for how the frameworks interact.

The CFTC plan rests on a 2010 Dodd-Frank provision requiring retail commodity trades offered with leverage, margin or financing to take place on a CFTC-registered exchange, as if they were futures. Regulation CAM would create a “crypto asset market” licence, a tailored version of the designated contract market status held by futures exchanges.