SEC, CFTC-Registered Exchanges Receive Blessing to Facilitate Spot Crypto Trading

Exchanges registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission should be allowed to facilitate trading of some spot crypto products, the two agencies announced in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The SEC and CFTC, the primary regulators of asset markets, did not mention specific digital assets, but said their joint staff statement covers crypto products centered on “leverage, margin, and financed spot retail commodity transactions.”

Earlier this year, a report, dubbed “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology” and issued by the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, asked the agencies to provide “regulatory clarity” on those assets, including other issues.

Under the law, registered exchanges are not prohibited from facilitating trading of those spot crypto asset products, they said Tuesday.

“As contemplated by the PWG Report, the Divisions’ coordination will promote trading venue choice and optionality for market participants within the U.S.,” the joint statement reads. “In line with these goals, the divisions stand ready to support consideration by their respective agencies of exchange trading in certain spot crypto asset products.

The statement is among the latest evidence of the rapidly improving regulatory environment for digital assets under the Trump administration.

In the eight months since Donald Trump has been in office, the SEC and CFTC have dropped multiple lawsuits against prominent crypto organizations and repeatedly signaled their willingness to work with an industry that supported Trump’s 2024 campaign.

“Proud to work together with @SECPaulSAtkins to deliver another win on regulatory clarity to trade crypto how you want and where you want to, safely on registered exchanges,”Acting CFTC Chairman Caroline Pham wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

CFTC-registered designated contract markets, foreign board of trade, and commodity transactions listed on an SEC-registered national securities exchange “will not be “prohibited from facilitating the trading of certain spot crypto asset products,” the statement reads.

The regulators invited “market participants to engage with SEC or CFTC staff, as needed.”

Among other points, the agencies said that applicable rules will permit clearinghouses to partner with a custodian to maintain customer accounts.

They recommended “sharing of reference pricing venues by NSEs, DCMs, and FBOTs to improve market surveillance.

In an X post, VanEck Head of Digital Assets Research Matthew Sigel wrote that the statement suggested that major equity exchanges, including NYSE and the Nasdaq, would “soon have spot trading for BTC, ETH, and more.”

But Amanda Fischer, former SEC chief of staff to Gary Gensler, was wary of that possibility and raised concerns about the statement’s vagueness and the absence  of regulation.

“There’s a lot of fanfare, but this statement doesn’t actually answer any questions,” Fischer wrote in an X thread. “The issue is that the exchange, as a self-regulatory organization, and the SEC will have very little to no legal authority to set rules, examine, or enforce trading or customer rules around spot commodities trading on securities exchanges.”