CFTC Sends Crypto Rules to White House as Clarity Act Stalls — SkimNews
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- CFTC submitted a crypto market proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget on Thursday, days after the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate; details of the draft rules remain undisclosed.
- After OMB review the proposal returns to the CFTC for a vote and public comment, then requires another vote to take effect.
- The SEC issued an "innovation exemption" Thursday giving qualifying platforms a five-year conditional path to offer onchain trading of certain tokenized stocks without registering as securities exchanges.
- The CFTC also published a no-action letter Friday letting passive software providers — including some crypto wallet interfaces — connect users to regulated derivatives markets without registering as introducing brokers.
- Under the no-action relief, providers can market specific contracts and earn transaction-based fees but cannot hold customer assets, generate buy/sell signals, or control order routing; the letter imposes risk-disclosure, recordkeeping, and marketing-compliance conditions.
- CFTC chair Mike Selig wrote on X after Wednesday's decision: "The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance."
Why it matters: With Congress deadlocked on the CLARITY Act, both the CFTC and SEC are using existing statutory authority to set crypto rules — giving exchanges, tokenization platforms, and software providers a clearer compliance path even as legislation stalls, though the OMB submission's undisclosed scope leaves near-term obligations unsettled.
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