US CFTC Rules Bring Tokenized Treasuries Inside Customer Funds — Your Bitcoin Can Already Count as Margin, With a 20% Haircut

Your Bitcoin can already count as margin at a qualifying US futures broker. But how much counts? In specified customer-account calculations, the haircut is generally at least 20%. That means a $100,000 crypto holding can contribute just $80,000 of recognized collateral value before its market price falls.

Now the CFTC has clarified another part of the plumbing: how tokenized versions of permitted investments fit inside the rules governing customer funds. For American traders, the useful question is what your broker can accept, what it can do with customer cash, and how quickly your collateral cushion can shrink.

What the CFTC actually changed on September 24

The CFTC’s Release 9303-26, dated September 24, 2026, announced updated FAQs from the Market Participants Division, Division of Market Oversight, and Division of Clearing and Risk. They address investments of customer funds in tokenized forms of already permitted assets, plus blockchain or distributed-ledger systems used to meet recordkeeping obligations.

The FAQs first appeared on March 20, 2026. They build on Staff Letter 25-39, the tokenized collateral guidance, and Staff Letter 26-05, the digital-asset margin no-action position. Chairman Michael S. Selig framed the update as part of the agency’s continuing work to clarify crypto regulation.

The September update therefore should not be read as the moment Bitcoin first became usable under the staff’s margin framework. It addresses a related but distinct issue: how existing customer-fund investment and recordkeeping requirements apply when the technology changes.

US Regulation 1.25: a token does not manufacture eligibility

For a US futures commission merchant, or FCM, accepting an asset from a customer and investing customer cash are separate decisions governed by separate requirements. CFTC Regulation 1.25 controls permitted investments of customer funds. Tokenization does not add a new asset category to that list.

A tokenized Treasury instrument must pass the underlying investment test and the token structure test. A Treasury label on a product page does not establish what the holder legally owns. The rights attached to the token and the custody arrangement matter alongside the underlying asset.

The practical checklist is specific:

• Underlying eligibility: The asset itself must already be a permitted investment under Regulation 1.25(a). An ineligible asset stays ineligible after tokenization.
• Holder rights: The token must provide the same, or functionally equivalent, legal and economic rights as the traditional asset.
• Investment limits: Liquidity requirements, concentration limits, maturity restrictions, and instrument-characteristic restrictions still apply.
• Qualified custody: The tokenized investment must be held at a qualified depository.

For a retail customer, this is a reason to ask for the actual investment and custody documentation. A blockchain record can identify a token while leaving unanswered the question that matters in a dispute: what claim does that token give its holder?

The same boundary explains why accepting a compliant payment stablecoin as margin does not authorize an FCM to buy stablecoins with customer cash. Staff Letter 26-05 did not expand Regulation 1.25’s permitted-investment list. Your broker cannot treat collateral eligibility as permission to change how it invests customer money.

Your Bitcoin’s 20% haircut belongs to a specific US calculation

Staff Letter 26-05 is a conditional staff no-action position. Its origin was a request from Coinbase Financial Markets. The February 6, 2026 reissuance clarified that a national trust bank can qualify under the letter’s payment-stablecoin issuer definition.

Qualifying FCMs can count certain non-security digital assets, including payment stablecoins, when determining whether a customer account is undermargined and when performing specified segregation calculations. This is conditional treatment for defined calculations, not a promise that every futures broker accepts your coins.

For non-stablecoin crypto, those calculations generally require a haircut of at least 20%. There is an exception when both the collateral asset and the position are based on, and denominated in, the same asset. Do not assume the exception applies merely because your trade has some connection to Bitcoin.

Payment stablecoins receive a different treatment: start with fair market value, then apply the haircut required by the firm’s own risk policies. A stablecoin’s intended price stability does not eliminate the firm’s valuation and risk-management responsibilities.

FCM calculations, DCO haircuts, and capital charges are different

The FCM handles your customer account. A derivatives clearing organization, or DCO, performs the clearing function and has its own collateral standards. The FCM’s corporate balance sheet introduces another calculation altogether. Mixing these together makes the same percentage sound like a universal margin rule when it is not.

Under Regulation 39.13(g)(12), the DCO sets appropriate initial-margin collateral haircuts and must reevaluate them at least monthly. The customer-account treatment in the staff letter does not substitute for that process.

The proprietary figures come from Q6 of the March 20 CFTC FAQs. They are deductions in the firm’s net-capital calculation for assets the firm owns. The 2% payment-stablecoin capital charge is not your personal collateral haircut. Likewise, a minimum 20% capital charge on the firm’s Bitcoin inventory does not establish the initial margin required for your futures trade.

Ask which calculation a quoted haircut belongs to before treating it as usable buying power.

The arithmetic: $80,000 can become $68,000

Here is an illustration, not language from a regulation. Assume a $100,000 holding used as collateral receives a 20% haircut. Its recognized value is $80,000. If its market price then falls 15% and the haircut stays unchanged, recognized value becomes $68,000.

The $100,000 here is the market value of the collateral holding, not a statement about a futures contract’s notional value or its required initial margin. Keeping those quantities separate is essential to understanding your account.

Your collateral can lose recognized value even before considering what happened to the derivative position it supports. Whether that creates a shortfall depends on the account’s obligations and the applicable requirements. A displayed crypto balance alone cannot answer the question. The relevant figure is the value your FCM recognizes against what your account must support.

The CEA segregation rule reaches the broker’s balance sheet

US customer segregation rules are central to why these haircuts matter. The Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC rules prohibit an FCM from using one customer’s property to support another customer’s positions. A customer shortfall cannot simply be assigned to someone else’s assets in the customer pool.

When a customer’s margin is insufficient, the FCM may have to supply its own funds to the segregated account. Falling crypto collateral can therefore affect both the customer’s available cushion and the futures merchant’s own balance sheet. For a US retail trader, this is a concrete connection between account-level risk controls and the financial resources of the intermediary holding the account.

The residual-interest rules also distinguish among assets. Under the conditions of Staff Letter 26-05, an FCM can deposit its own payment stablecoins into segregated customer accounts as residual interest. It cannot use its own Bitcoin or Ether for that purpose. Nor does the stablecoin permission let the firm spend customer cash buying stablecoins.

The letter also imposes operational conditions with two different clocks. For three months from the date an FCM first accepts crypto assets from customers, the collateral it may accept is limited to payment stablecoins, Bitcoin, and Ether; during that same window it must give prompt written notice of any significant operational or system issue, disruption, or failure, including a cybersecurity incident. Reporting runs on a separate schedule: weekly filings that list holdings by asset type across futures, foreign futures, and cleared swaps accounts are required for three calendar months beginning with the month after the firm files its notice of intent to rely on the letter. Once the three-month collateral limit expires, other crypto assets may be accepted if the letter’s continuing conditions are met, and at least one category of addition requires the firm to file revised risk management policies before it accepts the asset.

This makes the broker’s actual implementation important. An eligible asset under the framework is not automatically an asset your particular FCM is ready or permitted to handle under its policies.

Blockchain records still have to work for US regulators

The recordkeeping clarification follows the same approach. Regulations 1.31 and 45.2 are technology-neutral. Blockchain or distributed-ledger records can satisfy the requirements when they preserve authenticity and reliability and can be produced promptly and made available to regulators.

Regulation 1.31’s record-retention and production requirements remain the relevant standard. Putting data on a ledger does not create a separate blockchain rulebook or excuse a firm from producing usable records. For customers, the useful operational question is whether the firm can retrieve and reconcile the records needed to explain an account balance or collateral transfer.

The market backdrop does not change the collateral math

In the September 28 market snapshot, Bitcoin was $84,026, down 0.31% over the preceding 24 hours. Ether was $2,671.02, down 0.78%; SOL was $121.71, up 0.76%; and XRP was $1.51, down 0.32%. The Fear and Greed Index stood at 74, or Greed.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.39 billion of net inflows in the week ending September 25, the largest weekly total of 2026. Daily inflows nevertheless declined from $999.0 million on September 21 to $134.5 million on September 25. That distinction matters when reading the weekly ETF flow report: the strong weekly total and slowing daily inflows describe different aspects of the same period.

The US Treasury backdrop is also relevant: the Treasury yield at the ten-year maturity moved above 5% after September 23. Yield does not settle whether a particular tokenized Treasury structure qualifies under customer-fund rules. Eligibility, rights, investment limits, and custody still need to be checked.

Washington’s broader process remains separate. The Senate’s September 15 procedural vote on the CLARITY Act failed 49-50, short of the 60 votes needed to advance it. On September 17, the CFTC sent the draft titled Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets to the White House’s OMB/OIRA for review. Neither step should be confused with the specific customer-funds clarification.

Also on September 17, Staff Letter 26-25 expanded passive-software no-action treatment beyond the March 17 Staff Letter 26-09 issued to Phantom Technologies, covering passive software providers that meet ten conditions. That action concerns a different regulatory question from the valuation of assets in your futures account.

Before posting crypto, ask your futures broker these questions

Call your FCM’s margin or risk desk before transferring coins. Get answers that refer to your account and the asset you intend to post, rather than relying on a general announcement about crypto collateral.

• What value will my account actually receive? Ask for the applicable haircut, valuation method, and whether the same-asset exception applies. Have the broker distinguish its customer-account calculation from the DCO’s collateral treatment.
• What happens if collateral prices fall? Ask when the firm recalculates recognized value, how it communicates a shortfall, and what assets it will accept to meet the account’s obligations.
• Where will the assets be held, and under which rules? For tokenized investments, request the depository arrangement and the documentation establishing holder rights. Confirm which assets the FCM currently accepts under its implemented policies.

Then compare the broker’s written answers with your account statement. Identify the collateral’s market value, its recognized value, and the obligation it supports. Run the $100,000-to-$80,000-to-$68,000 illustration against your own liquidity planning before committing collateral. The practical benefit of regulatory clarity is being able to ask a more precise question—and obtain an answer you can use.