CFTC Opens Crypto Rulebook as Selig Tells Industry 'Build Here'

CFTC Opens Crypto Rulebook as Selig Tells Industry: Stay in America and ‘Build Here’

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is opening the door to a broad new federal framework for crypto markets, and Chairman Michael S. Selig is making no bones about where he wants the industry to build.

Speaking at Fordham’s blockchain regulatory symposium, Selig traced crypto from Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin through Ethereum and the offshore exchange era before arriving at Washington’s next act.

“For years, entrepreneurs building on the air finance, based on certainty, about whether there was a place for them in our market,” Selig said. His answer was considerably shorter:

“Build here.”

CFTC Takes the Wraps Off Its Crypto Plan

On Monday, the CFTC published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) seeking comment on a regulatory framework for crypto asset transactions under Section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act. The proposal is not a final rule. Instead, it starts the process of gathering industry and public feedback that could shape future rulemaking. Comments are due within 60 days of publication in the Federal Register.

Among the ideas on the table is a specialized designated contract market registration category called a “crypto asset market,” purpose-built for covered crypto transactions. The agency is also asking how it can curb abusive practices and formally incorporate crypto-specific compliance practices developed through more than a decade of market oversight.

The CFTC Chairman framed the exercise as more than regulatory housekeeping. “The American people deserve clarity, certainty, and consumer protections in the crypto asset markets,” he explained on Monday at the event, arguing that the CFTC intends to fold crypto transactions into a uniform national regulatory framework. He also vowed that the commission would pursue rules “designed to prevent, rather than only prosecute after the fact, fraudulent schemes such as FTX.”

From Bitcoin’s ‘Big Bang’ to Washington’s Rulebook

Selig’s Fordham speech went considerably further into crypto’s history. He called Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper “the Big Bang of a new universe of decentralized networks, applications, and assets,” before describing the Bitcoin protocol as politically and architecturally decentralized, without a single controller or central point of failure.

Ethereum, smart contracts, and tokenization followed, producing what Selig described as a “Cambrian explosion of crypto assets.” But the open networks were eventually joined by centralized exchanges and brokerages, some of which set up offshore and later imploded after hacks or fraud. That history supplies the backdrop for the CFTC’s latest swing at the regulatory ball.

“If the regulators get the rules right, they can usher in a golden age,” Selig stressed at the event. The framework, he argued, would establish “clear rules of the road” while giving firms serving Americans a path to operate under the Commodity Exchange Act.

Selig’s Message to Crypto: Stay in America

The speech eventually boiled the commission’s pitch down to keeping startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and builders in the United States. Selig followed with another call to action: “Build markets that are open, competitive, and worthy of the public’s trust.” Then came the regulatory bargain Washington is putting on the table:

“Build under American rules and American standards.”

For now, those rules are still being written. The U.S. commodities regulator is asking questions, collecting comments, and deciding what a purpose-built federal crypto market regime should actually contain. The heat is on, but nobody has inked the final rulebook yet.