The CFTC's October 5 advance notice of proposed rulemaking, a 109-page document with no binding text, sets out two frameworks for retail crypto trading: Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions, or CTX, and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets, or CAM. The detail most likely to reshape exchange operations is a single test, whether a buyer has taken "actual delivery" of the coins.
Under the Commodity Exchange Act, a leveraged, margined or financed retail commodity purchase is treated like a futures contract unless the buyer gets actual delivery within 28 days. The CFTC's preliminary view is that delivery to a wallet the customer controls, including holding the private keys, would satisfy that test. Coins left on an exchange's internal ledger would not. Under the agency's early reading, a fully paid trade stays within its jurisdiction until delivery happens if the platform offers leverage, and an offer counts even when the customer declines it.
CAM is the venue side. It would be a new subcategory of designated contract market for exchanges that offer these transactions, alongside the existing route for exchanges that already hold a DCM registration. The notice contemplates proof-of-reserves duties for exchanges that hold customer property in omnibus accounts.
The notice names no cap on leverage. CFTC Chair Mike Selig has said US-regulated crypto derivatives exchanges currently offer around 7x or less, suggesting similar limits could apply to spot margin. He has also called the framework a federal option, not a mandate, and has written that the CFTC cannot require all crypto trading to happen on registered exchanges without Congress.
Comments are due 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register, which one tracker lists as December 14. The notice does not oblige anyone to do anything yet.
The timeline shows what the rules replace. The CFTC sent both frameworks to White House review on September 17, two days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act. We reported the vote's fallout when crypto stocks sold off after the bill collapsed and, two days later, when the SEC and CFTC moved unilaterally on crypto rules , including a CFTC no-action position for passive software providers.
That sequence began earlier, when we tracked how the CLARITY Act was shelved until September and how the SEC moved on its own track in August. The SEC's comment period on Regulation Crypto Assets closes today. The CFTC's remains open into December.
The CFTC's authority over spot markets is limited, and its strongest hold is on derivatives and leveraged retail transactions, which is why the notice is built around leverage as the trigger. Selig has urged Congress to pass market structure legislation, and has acknowledged that agency action cannot substitute for law indefinitely, since a future commission could rewrite the rules. For exchanges, the practical question is custody: if customers want leverage, they either accept CFTC supervision or move coins to their own wallets within 28 days.
