CFTC Moves on Crypto Rules After Congress Drops the Ball
The CFTC is pushing its own crypto framework using existing powers after the CLARITY Act stalled in Congress.
The CFTC isn't waiting around. Chair Michael Selig just signaled the agency is moving forward on crypto regulation by leaning on its existing statutory authorities — no new legislation required. This comes directly after Congress failed to advance the CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that was supposed to hand crypto a proper regulatory home.
So now you've got two federal agencies — the SEC and the CFTC — both proposing their own crypto frameworks at roughly the same time. That's not coordination, that's competition. And for traders, that ambiguity is the actual risk. Jurisdictional overlap between these two regulators has been the core tension in US crypto policy for years, and it just got messier.
Read more EU Regulator Gives Crypto Firms 3 Months to Drop Non-MiCA Stablecoins →
The CLARITY vote failing is a big deal. It was the legislative path that would have drawn a cleaner line between which tokens are securities and which are commodities. Without it, the CFTC and SEC are each making their own calls — and those calls don't always align. That means projects, exchanges, and yes, retail traders, are operating in a gray zone that could flip depending on which agency comes knocking.
Watch this space closely. When two regulators are each staking out turf, enforcement actions tend to follow. The CFTC's move here isn't just regulatory housekeeping — it's a power play. If you're holding or trading tokens that could be classified as commodities, the CFTC's framework is about to matter a lot more to you than it did last month.
Continue reading at Cointelegraph.
