CFTC Seeks Feedback on Plan to List Spot Crypto on Registered Exchanges

The CFTC is seeking public feedback to allow federally regulated futures exchanges to host spot crypto trading. 

Acting Chair Caroline Pham announced the initiative Monday, describing it as the agency’s first step in a broader effort to implement federal guidance on digital assets.

The plan would allow designated contract markets, or DCMs, to list physically settled crypto contracts using existing legal authority. Pham pointed to current rules under the Commodity Exchange Act as enough to proceed.

"There is a clear and simple solution the CFTC can implement now," Pham said in a statement, inviting stakeholders to submit feedback by August 18.

Pham opposes adopting complex EU-style MiCA regulation. 

The acting Chair is instead proposing to leverage existing CFTC frameworks, specifically its current authority over retail FX and futures exchanges, to regulate spot crypto markets within 12-18 months, maintaining that regulatory simplicity is key to preserving U.S. market leadership and innovation.

Currently, the Commodity Exchange Act “requires that retail trading of commodities with leverage, margin, or financing must be conducted on a DCM,” Pham explained. “Together, we will make America the crypto capital of the world.”

A Designated Contract Market, or DCM, is a CFTC-registered exchange that lists futures and options. Examples of these include the CME Group and ICE Futures U.S. The venues follow strict federal rules on market integrity, surveillance, and customer protections.

The CFTC is seeking public comment on how spot crypto contracts should be structured on DCMs, including whether additional safeguards are needed and how potential conflicts with securities laws might be addressed.

But the proposal has drawn scrutiny from legal experts who warn of structural and jurisdictional risks.

Its success “ultimately depends on meaningful inter-agency coordination and clear ‘asset-by-asset’ determinations before listing,” Andrew Rossow, a public affairs attorney and CEO of AR Media Consulting, told Decrypt. “This is not a universal 'one-size-fits-all' solution.”

Rossow pointed to what he described as an unresolved “security-commodity” classification problem that could pose a regulatory paradox the initiative may have to wrestle with.

“The CFTC’s initiative assumes it can proceed with listing crypto assets as commodities, but that directly conflicts with the SEC’s position that many of these same assets qualify as securities under the Howey test,” he said.

But the SEC hasn’t “conceded regulatory territory” yet, Rossow said. Attempting “to force crypto assets which often exhibit hybrid characteristics” into such a binary framework “creates inherent legal instability,” he said.

What’s dangerous, Rossow said, is when a token that initially qualifies as a commodity later takes on security-like features through governance changes, staking mechanisms, or protocol upgrades.

“The static nature of initial regulatory classification cannot accommodate this dynamic reality,” Rossow said.

That disconnect, he warned, could expose market participants to real legal risk “where they could face retrospective SEC enforcement for unregistered securities transactions, market making violations, or broker-dealer registration failures,” even if they already complied with CFTC rules “in good faith.”