CFTC Sends Crypto Market Rulemaking to White House Review

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sent a crypto market rulemaking to the White House for review this week, opening a federal review step days after the Senate refused to advance market structure legislation. The Block reported on Sept. 18 that the agency filed an action titled "Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets" with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House office that examines agency rules before publication.

The filing reached the review office on Sept. 17, according to a second account of the same entry. That account identifies the action as RIN 3038-AF80 and places it at the prerule stage. The two reports agree on the core fact: a CFTC crypto markets action is now pending inside the executive review process.

Prerule status matters because it marks the earliest phase of federal rulemaking. The entry, as described in the Crypto Times account, does not contain a draft rule, does not open a comment period, and does not impose new duties on any firm. Agencies use the prerule stage to decide whether and how to start a rulemaking, sometimes through an advance notice or a review of existing rules, before any notice of proposed rulemaking appears.

The public entry leaves the substance blank. It lists no legal deadline and does not say which coins, venues, or intermediaries the agency plans to cover, the same account notes. The filing cites the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as underlying authority and carries no "economically significant" tag. For now, the docket shows a title, a number, a receipt date, and a stage, not a policy.

The agency declined to discuss the contents. The Block noted that the CFTC would not comment on details of the proposed rulemaking. That silence is normal at this stage, since the text under review has not been published and can change during discussions between the agency and the review office.

Timing supplies the context. Two days before the filing, the Senate voted 49-50 on a motion to take up H.R. 3633, the House bill carrying the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, short of the 60 votes needed to proceed. The Block tied the filing directly to that failed Tuesday vote, describing federal agencies as moving ahead on their own after the bill stalled.

The House-passed bill would have written a statutory market structure into law and handed the derivatives regulator a larger role over digital commodities. With the procedural vote lost, the existing split of authority between Washington regulators stays in place. The filing provides the first visible agency step after the Senate result, although the entry itself does not mention the vote, as the Crypto Times observed.

Democratic opposition centered on ethics. Key negotiators pointed to President Donald Trump's crypto holdings, now estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars and tied to World Liberty Financial, the venture run by his sons, alongside his memecoin, raising questions about his sway as his administration writes market rules. That account of the objections comes from the Sept. 18 report, which described wealth estimates and family links as lawmakers debated the bill.

The same week brought parallel agency action. On Sept. 17, the Securities and Exchange Commission released a long-awaited innovation exemption to make room for onchain trading of tokenized stocks, while the CFTC issued a no-action position saying staff would not recommend enforcement against certain software developers for failing to register as introducing brokers when conditions are met. Both moves arrived within a day of the Senate vote, per the same report.

CFTC Chair Michael Selig had warned such a fallback was coming. In an Aug. 20 address to the agency's Innovation Advisory Committee at its inaugural meeting in Washington, he said he had directed staff to start mapping a market structure for crypto assets built on powers Congress already granted. The speech carries the standard note that the views are his own as chair and do not necessarily reflect the full commission.

Selig framed legislation as the first choice and agency rules as the backup. He said he remained hopeful Congress would send bipartisan market structure legislation to the president's desk and called passage the surest way to stop future enforcement swings against the industry. Then he set the condition plainly: if the bill keeps stalling, the agency will use current law to start building a regime for crypto asset markets, because, in his words, the public is owed action.

The plan he sketched would stretch existing exchange categories to fit crypto. Staff are examining whether current registrants as well as non-registrant crypto exchanges could be designated as a type of designated contract market known as a crypto asset market, allowed to offer trading on a margined or higher-risk basis under tailored rules and federal oversight. That passage of the address names the exact model now moving through review: purpose-fit requirements applied through a familiar registration form.

Developers got a separate mention. Selig said he told staff to sit down with builders of onchain finance protocols to find paths for offering their software in the United States in a lawful way. The line matters because much of the industry's fight with Washington has centered on whether writing or publishing code can trigger intermediary registration. The remarks promise engagement on that question without prejudging the answer.

He also gave Congress room before acting. The agency would let the Clarity bill have its vote, he said, but if opponents blocked a fair version reflecting compromises from both parties, he would tell staff to move fast on proposals for the industry. The Sept. 17 filing landed two days after the Senate vote he had been waiting on, a sequence both outlets documented.

After the vote, Selig said Americans still need market clarity despite the legislative setback and pointed to authority already on the books. The derivatives regulator oversees commodity futures and swaps plus certain retail commodity deals done on margin or with financing, which gives it a route into parts of crypto trading without fresh statutes. What it cannot do alone is register and supervise ordinary spot exchanges in the way the failed bill would have authorized, a limit agency rulemaking cannot erase.

The two regulators have been coordinating. The CFTC and the SEC run a formal harmonization effort meant to sort jurisdictional lines and cut overlap, and in March they issued joint guidance on how federal securities laws apply to certain crypto assets and deals. Former CFTC Chair Christopher Giancarlo now expects both agencies to keep writing crypto rules even without a statute this year, in an assessment cited alongside the filing.

Review mechanics set the near-term calendar. Under Executive Order 12866, the White House review office examines agency actions before they advance, and outsiders may ask for meetings while an item sits in the queue. The office can clear the action, seek changes, or send it back. None of those outcomes creates law by itself. A cleared prerule would still need later documents, a formal proposal, public comment, and a final vote before any obligation attaches.

That is why the next milestone is paper, not policy. Because RIN 3038-AF80 sits at the prerule stage, the telling development will be the release of CFTC documents explaining which markets and activities the agency wants to reach. Until then, traders, exchanges, and developers face no new filing or registration step from this docket line, the Crypto Times account stresses.

The entry as published contains no proposed text, no deadline, and no list of covered platforms.