Federal regulators have introduced a new proposal designed to regulate digital asset markets and transactions.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) introduced a proposal Monday (Oct. 5) for a regulatory framework governing retail transactions involving crypto assets (CTXs), and said it is seeking public comment on the proposed rule.
“Today’s action is a critical step in the CFTC’s ongoing efforts to ensure America remains the crypto capital of the world,” CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said in the announcement.
“The American people deserve clarity, certainty, and consumer protections in the crypto asset markets and the agency is committed to delivering this by incorporating crypto asset transactions into its uniform national market regulatory framework.”
We’d love to be your preferred source for news.
Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks!
Among the topics the commission is seeking comment on are ways to prevent “abusive practices” in cryptocurrency markets and transactions under a uniform national regime. Selig said this is part of his plan to create regulations that will “prevent, rather than only prosecute after the fact, fraudulent schemes such as FTX.”
The proposal follows the U.S. Senate’s recent failure to advance the Clarity Act, which would have established a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.
That outcome “left unresolved questions about regulatory jurisdiction and the durability of rules developed without new congressional authorization,” PYMNTS wrote last month. “The legislation remains procedurally capable of reconsideration, but its immediate legislative path has stalled.”
But since then, the crypto sector has embarked on a new path. On Sept. 24, the Federal Reserve proposed two sets of rules to implement the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin bill signed into law last year.
“They address permissible stablecoin reserve assets, capital requirements, risk management, custody arrangements and the approval process for supervised banks seeking to issue payment stablecoins, all issues that Clarity was meant to answer,” the report said.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Monday, Selig acknowledged the CFTC’s efforts are happening in a vacuum created by the failure of the bill.
“The CFTC is starting the process of addressing gaps in crypto-asset market structure and creating clear rules of the road for innovators and market participants,” he wrote. “We haven’t solved every problem, nor can agency action substitute indefinitely for a statutory framework passed by Congress, but we must do what we can.”
Add as Preferred Source
