CFTC Submits Crypto Rules to White House After Senate Stalls — SkimNews
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- CFTC submitted a crypto market proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget on Thursday, though details on covered assets, exchange requirements, and authority limits were not disclosed; the rule still needs OMB review, a CFTC vote, public comment, and a second vote before taking effect.
- Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act earlier this week, prompting both the CFTC and SEC to vow continued coordination on digital-asset rules using their existing statutory authority.
- SEC issued an "innovation exemption" on Thursday giving qualifying platforms a five-year conditional path to offer onchain trading of certain tokenized stocks without registering as securities exchanges.
- CFTC Chair Mike Selig posted on X after Wednesday's vote: "The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance."
- CFTC published a no-action letter on Friday letting passive software providers — including crypto wallet interfaces — connect users to regulated derivatives markets without registering as introducing brokers, provided they don't hold customer assets, generate trade signals, or control order routing.
- No-action letter conditions permit providers to market specific contracts and earn transaction-based fees, but require risk disclosures, recordkeeping, and compliance with marketing rules; the relief stays in force until the CFTC adopts formal rules on software-developer registration.
Why it matters: With the Clarity Act dead in the Senate, the CFTC and SEC are now the sole engine of US crypto rulemaking — and the no-action letter is immediately operative, giving wallet developers a concrete compliance path to derivatives market access today rather than after years of formal rulemaking. Crypto companies gain near-term certainty from agency action but lose the statutory durability only a congressional bill would provide.
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