WSJ Op-Ed | CFTC’s New Rules for Crypto

Key dates

2026-10-05

The CFTC Chairman announced the proposed Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM framework, and independent industry reporting identified the accompanying action as an advance notice of proposed rulemaking.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to monitor the Federal Register for publication of the CTX/CAM ANPRM and calculate the 60-day comment period from the actual publication date rather than from the Chairman’s October 5 statement.
• Affected exchanges should map each product and customer flow against margin, leverage, financing, custody, settlement, and internal-ledger features to determine whether the activity could fall within the proposed CTX concept.
• State-licensed platforms may wish to assess the strategic and operational consequences of pursuing a CFTC registration pathway instead of relying solely on state money-transmitter licenses.
• Firms may wish to review governance, conflicts-of-interest controls, market surveillance, anti-manipulation controls, customer-asset segregation, operational resilience, disclosure, and recordkeeping capabilities against existing CFTC designated contract market and customer-protection expectations.
• Exchanges and service providers may wish to prepare comments addressing the scope of Section 2(c)(2)(D), the treatment of fully paid transactions, the boundary between spot trading and financed transactions, and the interaction between CAM registration and state licensing.
• Legal and compliance functions may wish to inventory crypto assets and classify them consistently with the referenced joint CFTC-SEC interpretation, while preserving separate analysis for assets that may constitute securities or fall outside the proposed framework.
• U.S.-facing offshore platforms should reassess territorial exposure and customer-access controls because the proposal may create a clearer federal compliance pathway without eliminating potential CFTC jurisdiction over unregistered or fraudulent activity.

What changed

The CFTC is proposing to use its existing Commodity Exchange Act authority, including Section 2(c)(2)(D), to develop a purpose-built framework for crypto asset transactions and markets. Regulation CTX would address retail crypto transactions involving margin, leverage, or financing. Regulation CAM would establish a tailored category of CFTC-registered crypto asset market, apparently as a specialized form of designated contract market, for exchanges offering those transactions. The proposed framework would permit qualifying CFTC-registered platforms to serve retail customers on a margined, leveraged, or financed basis under a single federal market-regulatory regime. It would not mandate that all crypto assets trade on CFTC-registered venues, and ordinary spot exchanges would not automatical

Who is affected

• U.S. and offshore crypto exchanges serving U.S. customers
• Crypto exchanges offering retail margin, leverage, financing, or internally recorded crypto positions
• State-licensed crypto intermediaries and money transmitters considering a federal registration pathway
• CFTC-registered designated contract markets and firms seeking registration as a crypto asset market
• Broker-dealers, futures commission merchants, clearing firms, custodians, and banks that may support leveraged crypto activity
• Retail customers trading bitcoin, ether, and other crypto assets treated as non-securities under the referenced CFTC-SEC interpretation

Related regulations

• Commodity Exchange Act Section 2(c)(2)(D)
• Commodity Exchange Act designated contract market requirements
• CFTC regulations governing designated contract markets
• State money-transmitter laws
• Joint CFTC-SEC interpretation of crypto asset classification