U.S. crypto policy saw two notable developments this week, both signaling that federal and state regulators are still working out how digital assets fit into existing financial rules — and that the industry has strong opinions about the order in which that happens.
CFTC Sets New Capital and Margin Standards for Bitcoin and Ether
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has finalized an update that puts a 20% capital charge on proprietary trading positions in bitcoin and ether, aligning the treatment of these assets with the haircut framework the Securities and Exchange Commission already applies to broker-dealers. The change is aimed at giving regulated trading firms clearer, more consistent capital requirements when they hold major cryptocurrencies on their own books.
Alongside the capital charge, the CFTC is now allowing derivatives clearing organizations (DCOs) to accept crypto assets as initial margin for cleared transactions, provided those assets meet existing risk-management standards. This effectively brings bitcoin and ether closer to being treated like other eligible collateral in the derivatives clearing system, rather than being handled as a special case.
Tokenization Gets a Boost Under Updated FAQs
In a related move, the CFTC published four new FAQs that expand how tokenized assets can be used in the futures market. Futures commission merchants (FCMs) and DCOs will now be permitted to invest customer funds in tokenized versions of investments that are already allowed under Regulation 1.25 — tokenized money market fund shares being the most immediate example — as long as the tokenized asset carries the same legal and economic rights as its traditional counterpart.
The FAQs also give the industry a green light to use blockchain and distributed ledger technology for recordkeeping under existing CFTC regulations, including the option to skip maintaining separate offchain copies of records, provided firms can still produce those records for the Commission even if a network goes down.
Industry Groups Push New York to Pause Stablecoin Rulemaking
While the CFTC was finalizing its own rules, the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) formally asked New York's Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to hold off on its proposed rule for authorized payment stablecoin issuers. The CCI's argument is straightforward: the federal framework for stablecoins under the GENIUS Act is not finished yet, and key pieces — including the Treasury's substantial-similarity criteria and implementing rules from the OCC, FDIC and Federal Reserve — are all still being worked out.
The group's position is that moving forward with a state-level rule before the federal framework is locked in risks creating overlapping or conflicting requirements for stablecoin issuers operating in New York, one of the most closely watched jurisdictions for crypto regulation in the country.
What It Means for the Market
Taken together, these two developments point in the same direction: U.S. regulators are actively building out the rulebook for how crypto assets are margined, cleared and issued, but there's real tension over pacing and coordination between federal agencies and state regulators. For traders and institutions, the CFTC's margin changes offer more clarity in the near term. For stablecoin issuers, the outcome of the NYDFS debate could determine whether they're dealing with one set of rules or several.
