Former CFTC Acting Chair Says Agency Can Regulate Crypto Without New Law

Former CFTC acting chair Caroline Pham said the Commodity Exchange Act gives the agency jurisdiction over nearly every commodity, with only onions and movie box office receipts excluded, so Congress does not need to pass new legislation to regulate crypto.

“There is very little that the CFTC’s jurisdiction doesn’t touch because the way that the Commodity Exchange Act is drafted, pretty much everything is a commodity except for onions and movie box office receipts,” Pham said in an interview conducted at the Token2049 conference in Singapore and published October 12. She is now chief legal officer and chief administrative officer at MoonPay, and her comments reflect her own views, not agency policy.

Pham argued the CFTC’s framework is principles-based and flexible enough to cover new types of commodities without fresh statutes. As an example she pointed to derivatives on AI compute: “Now people are looking at having AI compute markets and being able to put derivatives on AI compute. This is exactly what the CFTC’s regulatory framework was designed to anticipate.”

Her remarks arrive after the Clarity Act failed in September, a shift that moved industry attention toward agency rulemaking, though some in the sector continue to push for legislation. The CFTC under Chairman Michael Selig issued an advanced notice on Regulation CAM and Regulation CTX around October 5 that the agency said would create a federal framework for leveraged retail crypto transactions as an alternative to state licenses. An advanced notice is a non-binding early step that invites public feedback before a formal rule is drafted.

Pham endorsed the direction, saying the proposal would give retail traders in crypto the kind of protection the United States should have. “Much better to put it on a strongly regulated exchange than to leave it kind of out there for a patchwork of different laws,” she said. She framed the proposal as a continuation of the Crypto Sprint initiative she launched as acting chair in 2025, which authorized the first trading of spot crypto on CFTC-registered exchanges.

Pham joined the CFTC as a commissioner in April 2022 and served as acting chairman from January 20, 2025 until her departure on December 22, 2025. Under her tenure the agency launched a digital assets pilot in December 2025 that used BTC, ETH and USDC as tokenized collateral in derivatives markets. Whether Congress returns to a legislative framework is an open question.