Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig has directed agency staff to begin exploring a crypto-asset market structure that could be proposed under the CFTC’s existing authority if Congress does not pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
The instruction, disclosed in Selig’s prepared remarks at the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee’s inaugural meeting on August 20, is an early regulatory step rather than a proposed rule. No text, timetable or public-comment process has been announced, and no exchange has received new authority through the remarks.
Selig said staff should examine a framework that could let existing CFTC registrants and non-registered crypto exchanges seek designation as a type of designated contract market, or DCM, described in the speech as a “crypto asset market.” Under the concept, qualifying venues could offer leveraged or margined crypto trading subject to CFTC oversight and rules tailored to the activity.
A contingency plan, not a replacement law
The agency work is explicitly conditional. Selig said the CFTC would give Congress time to vote on CLARITY but would move toward proposing its own rules if lawmakers do not send a bill to the president. Cointelegraph separately reported the remarks after the committee meeting.
That distinction matters for compliance planning. Staff exploration can identify legal and operational options, but it does not establish the registration standard, capital requirements, custody arrangements, customer-protection measures or transition period that a formal proposal would need to address. Those details would have to emerge through subsequent agency action.
The contemplated framework would also operate within authority the CFTC says it already has. CLARITY, by contrast, is legislation intended to allocate and codify federal digital-asset market responsibilities. An agency rulemaking cannot be assumed to reproduce the bill’s scope, resolve every jurisdictional question or survive legal challenge in the same way as an act of Congress.
Selig also directed staff to engage developers of onchain-finance protocols about ways they could offer software legally in the United States. The speech did not define a developer safe harbor or specify which activities would qualify. Protocol developers therefore have an invitation to engage, not an exemption from current law.
What crypto payment companies should watch
The immediate subject is crypto trading and market structure, not merchant payments. The speech did not establish rules for payment-stablecoin issuance, reserve management, redemption, money transmission or merchant acceptance.
Even so, the work could affect companies operating at the boundary between payments and trading. Payment providers, wallets and treasury platforms may rely on exchanges for conversion, liquidity and risk management. A new CFTC venue category could change which counterparties can provide leveraged products, how those venues are supervised and what controls partners expect when connecting payment flows to trading infrastructure.
Those are potential downstream effects, not announced outcomes. Until the CFTC publishes a proposal, payment companies cannot determine whether the framework would cover their counterparties, require changes to integrations or create a new route to registration.
For industry compliance teams, the useful signal is procedural: the CFTC is preparing an administrative fallback while the Senate considers CLARITY. The next material milestone would be a formal proposal, staff paper or other agency document that defines scope and obligations. Until then, firms should distinguish the chair’s policy direction from an operative rule.