On 5 October 2026 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking titled Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets — Release 9307-26. Chairman Michael S. Selig described it the same day at Fordham as a purpose-fit option the agency can build because Congress did not pass the CLARITY Act. An advance notice asks questions and sketches a direction. It is not a proposed rule with binding text, and it is not a registration you can apply for on the strength of the notice alone.
The notice had gone to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on 17 September, two days after the Senate failed to invoke cloture on CLARITY, under RIN 3038-AF80. It was printed in the Federal Register on 13 October 2026 at 91 FR 64811. Comments are due 14 December 2026. The comment clock is the Register’s, not the date of the speech.
What happened
Two labels, two jobs. Regulation CTX would sit on section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act. That section already says a retail commodity transaction made with leverage, margin, or financing has to happen on a CFTC-registered exchange unless the asset is actually delivered. CTX is the Commission asking how to apply that existing line to crypto. At Fordham, Selig proposed treating delivery to a non-custodial wallet within 28 days as actual delivery. That is a suggestion inside a speech and a notice. It is not yet a definition you can rely on.
Regulation CAM would create a new kind of designated contract market, a “crypto asset market”, for those leveraged retail trades. Registration would be optional. An exchange that already has contract-market status could add crypto under tailored rules. Selig said the point is to stop schemes like FTX before the prosecution, rather than only afterwards. The CFTC cannot, on its own, require ordinary unleveraged spot trading to move onto its venues. That was a central job of the CLARITY Act, and the Senate did not take the bill up. Spot trading of bitcoin for dollars, with no loan attached, stays where it was: mostly state licences, plus the anti-fraud and anti-manipulation authority the CFTC already claims over commodities.
Do not mash this into the SEC’s Innovation Exemption of 17 September. That order is about tokenized listed stocks in pools, and it is already in effect as an exemption. Do not mash it into BitMEX’s 2020 enforcement case. That was a charge against a firm. This is a list of questions to the public. The same week, CFTC staff also cleared a narrow path for certain exchanges to turn expiring index futures into contracts without an expiry date, for positions that would otherwise have died on 20 October. That no-action letter is a third document. A perpetual future is a product design. It is not CAM.
Why it matters
If you trade bitcoin with leverage on an offshore app, this notice does not licence that app and does not shut it. If you buy spot bitcoin and withdraw it, the notice says, in substance, that the CFTC still lacks the statute to force that activity onto a federal crypto exchange. If you run a US platform and want one federal regime for retail leverage instead of a stack of state licences, CAM is the door they are describing, and the door is still a questionnaire. See regulation is a process memo, not permission. See how buying crypto actually works for the difference between a margined account and coins you can send.
“The CFTC wrote the first crypto exchange rules” will be the caption. The instrument is Release 9307-26. Rules that bind come later, if they come, after comments and a proposing release and a final release. A later commission can drop the project. The Senate can still write a statute that pre-empts it.
What happens next
Comments through 14 December. Then, if the Commission continues, a proposed rule with actual text. Watch cftc.gov and the Federal Register docket, not a banner that says leverage is now federally safe or federally banned. Nothing here is an instruction to open, close, or move a margined position.
Not legal advice. Not a recommendation of any exchange, contract, bitcoin, or ether.
