Who Regulates Crypto in the US? CFTC and SEC Compared

When a decision on crypto is taken in the United States, the first question is which agency was responsible in the first place. Two supervisors share the field, work under different statutes and have disagreed for years about where the border between them runs. On 20 August 2026 an advisory body of one of them convenes for the first time, staffed among others with the chief executives of Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Ripple and Solana Labs.

For you as an investor in Germany, two things matter here that regularly get muddled. First, neither of these agencies protects your balance: your rights come from the European MiCA regulation and are enforced by the BaFin. Second, what happens in Washington reaches you all the same, because the same companies sitting at that table also run your trading platform.

Two agencies share a market that knows no borders

Responsibility in the US grew up historically and sits badly on digital assets. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC for short, is the securities regulator and sees to it that securities are registered and that investors receive the information they need. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC for short, supervises commodities and the trading of derivative contracts, meaning futures, options and swaps.