U.S. crypto regulators moved on their own after Congress stalled, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sending a market-structure rulemaking to the White House and the Securities and Exchange Commission opening a temporary path for onchain stock trading. The shift comes two days after the Senate voted 49-50 against advancing the Clarity Act, short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.
On Thursday, the CFTC filed Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The action, listed as RIN 3038-AF80 and received on Sept. 17, sits at the prerule stage. The public docket does not include rule text, names no specific assets, and is not marked economically significant. After OIRA review, any draft would still need a CFTC vote and a public comment period before it could take effect.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig had already signaled that course. In an X post after the Senate vote, he wrote that Americans “deserve regulatory clarity, legal certainty, and consumer protections in crypto asset markets” and that the agency would “help [President Trump] get the job done using our existing statutory authorities.” He added: “The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance.”
The same week, CFTC staff broadened developer relief. In a Sept. 17 no-action position, the Market Participants Division said it would not recommend enforcement against providers of passive software — including certain wallet interfaces — for failing to register as introducing brokers when they only let users view markets and send orders directly to registered firms. Providers cannot hold customer assets, generate trading signals, or control order routing. The position remains in place until the Commission adopts rules or guidance on software-developer registration.
The SEC moved in parallel. In a Sept. 17 order, the Commission granted a temporary, conditional Innovation Exemption so Tokenized Securities Venues can trade tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned automated market makers without registering as exchanges. Liquidity providers in those pools received related dealer relief. The exemptions expire five years after publication. Chair Paul Atkins said the SEC was acting “within its statutory authority, to bring America’s capital markets into the digital age.” Tokenized shares must carry the same rights as the underlying stock, and issuers can opt out.
Markets treated the agency path as a substitute for legislation, at least in the short run. Bitcoin reclaimed $80,000 on Friday, rising more than 5% after consolidating near $75,000 to $78,000, while Solana and Hyperliquid each gained about 10%. Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead told CNBC the industry “doesn’t need Congress” because the SEC and CFTC “are enacting all of the things that would have been in Clarity anyway.” Agency rules can still be rewritten by a future administration or challenged in court, and the CFTC filing remains a draft without published text.
