CFTC proposes federal rules for leveraged crypto exchanges

America's derivatives regulator wants a bigger role in crypto. On October 5, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) asked the public to comment on two draft frameworks that would let exchanges offering leveraged crypto trades register with it, not with dozens of state agencies.

The agency published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, release 9307-26, and opened a 60-day comment window. Two new rule sets sit inside it. Regulation CTX would cover the leveraged trades. Regulation CAM would create a registration category for the venues that offer them.

What the two frameworks would do

Regulation CTX draws on section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act, the part that already governs leveraged retail commodity deals. Under the draft, registered futures commission merchants would sit between customers and the exchange, and the trades would carry Bank Secrecy Act checks against money laundering. CoinDesk reported the plan keeps an older carve-out too: deals that settle within 28 days count as actual delivery and fall outside the rule.

Its companion, Regulation CAM, aims at the venues. A platform could register as a crypto asset market, a lighter badge than the full designated contract market status that futures exchanges hold. Those platforms would face anti-manipulation rules and proof-of-reserves checks on the pooled customer funds they hold, according to CoinDesk and a Reuters report on the plan.

Months of groundwork sit behind the move. In late September the agency registered Coinbase Clearing as a US derivatives clearinghouse.

"Today's action is a critical step in the CFTC's ongoing efforts to ensure America remains the crypto capital of the world," said CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig. In a line quoted by Reuters, Selig put it plainly: "For years, entrepreneurs building on the new frontier of finance faced uncertainty about whether there was a place for them in our markets. We are giving them an answer."

This is an opt-in, not a mandate. Reuters reported that exchanges offering leveraged trades could pick the federal route instead of state licenses, and that the agency is not setting a fixed leverage cap. Platforms would clear their products with CFTC staff first. The draft leaves plenty for the comment period to settle.

Why spot trading is still a gap

Here is the catch. The rules reach leveraged, margined and financed trades, not plain spot buying and selling. Someone who swaps dollars for Bitcoin (BTC) on a basic exchange stays under state money-transmitter licenses, the same patchwork that governs the business today. The CFTC would keep only its fraud and manipulation powers over that spot activity.

Blame Congress for the gap. Lawmakers failed to advance the CLARITY Act, the bill that would have handed the CFTC clear authority over the spot crypto market, Reuters reported. So the agency is using the powers it already holds. It is not waiting for a law that may never arrive.

The move runs next to a parallel push from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has floated its own crypto custody rules for funds and advisers. Two agencies, two rulebooks, one market. Firms that have asked for clear federal rules for years now face a thicker stack of them, and the draft does not settle which regulator wins when a product looks like both a commodity and a security.

What to watch

A 60-day comment window is now open. After it closes, the CFTC can turn the notice into formal proposed rules, which starts another comment round before anything binds. Nothing is law yet.

Watch three things. Whether Congress revives the CLARITY Act and redraws these lines. Whether large exchanges take the federal badge or keep their state licenses. And whether the SEC and the CFTC can agree on where a token stops being a commodity and starts being a security. The agency has not set leverage limits, leaving that open too.