Earlier this week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC” or the “Commission”) issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (the “ANPRM”) describing its intent to build a federal regulatory framework for retail crypto asset transactions involving margin, leverage or financing, and to create a new category of CFTC-regulated trading venue, the Crypto Asset Market (“CAM”). The initiative is titled Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions (“Regulation CTX”) and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets (“Regulation CAM”).
The CFTC does not assert new jurisdiction in the ANPRM; rather, the agency is proposing to formalize in a rulemaking a legal theory the CFTC has pursued through enforcement for years. Section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act (the “CEA”), added in 2010, has long required “retail commodity transactions” involving margin, leverage or financing to trade on designated contract markets (“DCMs”) unless an exception applies. The Commission began enforcing that