CFTC sends crypto market structure rulemaking to White House after CLARITY Act fails

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sent a crypto market structure rulemaking to the White House for review, moving forward under its existing authority after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a division within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that reviews federal regulations before publication, received the filing on Sept. 17, 2026. The action is titled Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets and is listed at the prerule stage, the earliest point in the regulatory pipeline. The filing does not disclose what the planned regulation would contain, and the CFTC declined to comment on details.

The submission follows a Senate procedural vote earlier this week that blocked the CLARITY Act, the bill that would have established a federal regulatory framework for crypto markets. CFTC Chair Michael Selig had already committed the agency to acting without new legislation. In August remarks at the Innovation Advisory Committee’s inaugural meeting, he said, “I’ve directed the CFTC staff to begin exploring rules to codify a CFTC market structure for crypto assets using the agency’s existing authorities.” The day after the Senate vote, Selig posted on X that the agency was “locked in and ready to ship” rules for crypto markets using its existing statutory authority.

In that August speech, Selig described the shape a framework could take: a new type of designated contract market, called a crypto asset market, that current registrants and unregistered crypto exchanges alike could be designated as, offering leveraged or margined crypto trading under CFTC oversight. These details come from his remarks, not from the filed text, which remains undisclosed while it sits in OIRA review.

The path to a final rule is long. The proposal stays subject to OMB review and possible revisions before returning to the CFTC for a vote. If the commission approves, it would seek public comments before drafting a final rule, which itself would require commission approval before taking effect.

The filing is part of a broader regulatory push this week. On Thursday the CFTC issued a no-action position for developers of passive trading software, saying it would not recommend enforcement against them for not registering as introducing brokers if conditions are met. The SEC separately granted temporary, conditional exemptive relief to tokenized securities venues, letting them trade tokenized NMS stock through permissioned automated market makers without registering as exchanges. In a post on X, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency would move with or without legislation to deliver certainty for investors.

Bitcoin traded back above $80,000 after the filing.