SEC and CFTC to Co-Host Roundtable on "Regulatory Harmonization"
Commentary by Gage Raju-Salicki
The SEC and the CFTC will host a roundtable on "regulatory harmonization" to advance collaboration between the two agencies. The roundtable is scheduled for September 29, 2025.
In a joint statement, SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins and CFTC Acting Chair Caroline D. Pham said their goal was to foster financial innovation, particularly in digital assets and crypto markets, and to reverse the trend of novel financial products being developed overseas due to regulatory uncertainty in the United States. They said they intend to work together to create a "clear, predictable, and pro-innovation" framework to strengthen U.S. competitiveness.
The roundtable will focus on the following areas:
- 24/7 Markets: The agencies will explore whether expanding trading hours for certain asset classes could better align U.S. markets with the "global, always-on economy," while considering liquidity and investor protection.
- Event Contracts: The agencies will examine how prediction markets, including those based on securities, might responsibly offer event contracts to U.S. market participants across jurisdictional boundaries.
- Perpetual Contracts: The agencies will consider whether perpetual contracts, which are widely used offshore, can be introduced domestically under transparent leverage limits and strong risk-management standards.
- Portfolio Margining: The agencies will review the potential for a coordinated framework allowing offsetting positions across product classes, reducing capital inefficiencies and freeing balance-sheet capacity.
- Innovation Exemptions and DeFi: The agencies will consider safe harbors and exemptions that would permit decentralized finance protocols to facilitate peer-to-peer trading while longer-term rulemaking develops.
The agency's leaders asserted that clearer oversight is needed to prevent gaps in regulation and to support innovation. They stated that closer coordination can strengthen U.S. markets and provide a more predictable framework for investors, consistent with the recommendations of the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets.
Commentary
It looks like concerns about a regulatory "turf war" were overblown. We’re seeing more cooperation between the CFTC and SEC, particularly with respect to crypto. It’s notable that the main topics to be discussed during this roundtable deal primarily with contracts and 24/7 markets, as those appear to be heating up at the moment. Since the CFTC greenlit Polymarket's return to the U.S. and the CFTC appears to be okay with "perps" trading on the market, it’ll be interesting to see what more the two agencies have to say on these fronts—perhaps the SEC getting on board to the extent they can?—or if the discussion will instead recap existing developments.
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