CFTC Chair Highlights Progress on Administration's Crypto Roadmap

Acting CFTC Chair Caroline D. Pham briefed the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain Technologies on the Trump Administration’s regulatory pivot toward pro-innovation for digital assets and blockchain. 

In her remarks, Ms. Pham said the U.S. is moving quickly to implement the Trump Administration’s crypto roadmap and detailed greater coordination between the SEC and CFTC. She highlighted:

• New U.S. Policy: The Administration, through the President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, issued a report, Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology to provide a comprehensive roadmap for crypto regulation. She said the goal is to attract innovators and businesses back to the U.S., modernize bank regulation, reinforce the dollar, combat illicit finance, and ensure fair taxation for digital assets. She also praised recent Congressional actions such as the GENIUS Act on stablecoins and the CLARITY Act on digital asset market structure.
• End of Inter-Agency Conflict: Ms. Pham underscored enhanced collaboration between the SEC and CFTC, including aligning definitions, harmonizing reporting, and coordinating innovation exemptions. She highlighted a joint roundtable between the agencies to address harmonization and DeFi, declaring that "the turf war is over."
• CFTC's "Crypto Sprint": Ms. Pham called for technology-neutral, activity-based regulation and warned against repeating Dodd-Frank’s unintended consequences. She highlighted public consultations on spot crypto trading and noted a joint SEC-CFTC statement confirming registered exchanges may list certain spot assets under existing law. (See related coverage.) She said this brings crypto inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter that has safeguarded markets for nearly a century.
• Cross-Border Framework: Ms. Pham emphasized reliance on substituted compliance, mutual recognition, and passporting, noting the CFTC’s newly issued advisory on its longstanding foreign board of trade framework. She stated that European Union venues, authorized under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive ("MiFID") and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation ("MiCA"), could qualify for U.S. recognition and stressed that the U.S. should pragmatically align with comparable foreign regimes. She advocated for using the CFTC's existing, decades-old frameworks for recognizing foreign exchanges (Foreign Boards of Trade or FBOTs) as the fastest way to "onshore" trading activity from jurisdictions with comparable regulatory regimes (like the EU's MiFID and MiCA) and provide U.S. market access.