The CFTC Just Wrote America's First Crypto Rulebook: Leverage Is In, Spot Trading Is Still Out
On October 5, 2026, the CFTC opened consultation on a federal framework for leveraged retail crypto trading. Ordinary spot exchanges remain outside its proposed licensing system. America’s crypto rulebook has an opening draft, but no new binding rules. CFTC The initiative pairs Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions, or Regulation CTX, with Regulation Crypto Asset Markets, or Regulation CAM. Announced alongside Chairman Michael S. Selig’s appearance at the Fordham Law Blockchain Regulatory Symposium in New York, it sketches a dedicated federal market structure using powers Congress already granted. Its deliberate boundary is the critical detail: financing a retail crypto purchase could bring the transaction into federal exchange supervision; ordinary, unleveraged spot trading does not enter that system merely because crypto changes hands. Cointelegraph ...