CFTC Clarifies Crypto Rules After Clarity Act Stalls

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has updated its FAQs about crypto assets and blockchain technologies to provide greater clarity, the regulator said in a Thursday (Sept. 24) press release.

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    The updates address investments of customer funds in tokenized forms of permitted investments and the use of blockchain technologies to meet a registrant’s recordkeeping requirements, according to the release.

    The updates appear in the CFTC’s FAQs Concerning Registrant and Registered Entity Activities Relating to Crypto Assets and Blockchain Technologies, per the release.

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    The CFTC originally released the FAQs on March 20, providing responses to frequently asked questions about topics address in CFTC Staff Letter 25-39 (Tokenized Collateral Guidance) and CFTC Staff Letter 26-05 (Staff No-Action Position Regarding Digital Assets Accepted as Margin Collateral).

    “I’m pleased to see staff update these frequently asked questions consistent with the agency’s ongoing efforts to provide regulatory clarity for the crypto industry,” CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said in the release.

    In another, separate move, on Sept. 17, the CFTC submitted to the Office of Management and Budget a proposal to regulate crypto asset transactions and crypto asset markets.

    Bloomberg flagged that notice in a Sept. 18 report and said that the CFTC would have become the primary regulator for cryptocurrency under the Clarity Act, which failed to advance in the Senate earlier that week, and that Selig said in August that that he would ask the agency’s staff to find ways to codify market structure for digital assets.

    Selig said in August that if Congress didn’t pass the Clarity Act, the CFTC would use its existing authorities to begin establishing a crypto asset market regime.

    “We owe it to the American people to do so,” Selig said in remarks delivered Aug. 20 at the Innovation Advisory Committee Conference in Washington, D.C. “President Trump promised to deliver a crypto asset market structure, and we will help him deliver if Congress will not.”

    PYMNTS reported Sept. 16 that after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate, the crypto sector was looking to the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission to continue developing digital asset policy.