Fresh moves from the two largest regulators in the United States suggest the local crypto industry is still advancing on the regulatory front even without Congress.
The CFTC’s move coincided with the broader market’s price resurgence on Friday, leading to the question of whether BTC and the alts jumped because of regulatory developments.
SEC and Tokenized Stocks
CryptoPotato reported on September 17 that the SEC introduced a five-year “Innovation Exception” program designed to make it easier for qualifying platforms to trade tokenized US stocks on-chain. It allows eligible trading venues relief from some exchange requirements and offers liquidity providers temporary exceptions from dealer-registration rules.
Although tokenized stocks must still provide the same core shareholder rights as traditional equities, including dividends and voting rights, synthetic products that simply track the share price will be excluded.
The agency argued that the framework could enable 24/7 trading, faster settlement, greater transparency, and self-custody, while lowering barriers for blockchain-based securities platforms.
The timing was quite interesting, as it came just after the CLARITY Act setback, and it could carry a more important message than just regulating tokenized stocks. SEC Chair Paul Atkins previously said that the agency would continue its crypto agenda regardless of whether Congress passed CLARITY.
CFTC Follows Suit
The commodity watchdog made a similar move by submitting “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets” to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review at the end of the business week. As such, it began the next step toward a formal crypto market framework under its existing powers.
The CFTC also issued a no-action position protecting certain software developers from being treated as introducing brokers when specific conditions are met. Chair Michael Seling commented even before the CLARITY vote that even if it stalled, his agency would use existing authority to begin building a crypto market-structure regime anyway.
It’s worth noting that neither of those propositions by the SEC and the CFTC replaces the CLARITY Act. Rules written by regulators are less durable than legislation passed by Congress since they can be changed easily by a future administration. However, the developments may have reassured markets that the regulatory process has not returned to square one.
Perhaps that’s why bitcoin’s price rallied on Friday after the CFTC news went live, and skyrocketed from $78,000 to a two-week peak of over $81,000.
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