The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

The SEC and CFTC held their first joint roundtable in nearly 14 years, focusing on cooperation in crypto regulation despite a history of limited collaboration.

Alignment on Crypto Rules

Acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham acknowledged that unclear regulatory boundaries have sometimes created friction, complicating matters for market participants and global capital markets. She expressed satisfaction that both regulators are now aligning rules to reduce unnecessary costs, support responsible innovation, and foster fair competition. Pham referenced the SEC’s Project Crypto and the CFTC’s Crypto Sprint as early examples of coordination, emphasizing that harmonization could lead to enhanced efficiency, clarity, and broader investor access to digital assets.

Addressing the effectiveness of the CFTC, Pham highlighted the agency’s actions from January 20 to September 3, including 18 non-enforcement actions and 13 enforcement actions related to digital assets. Since September 4, the CFTC has initiated 14 additional legal proceedings. She stated these figures demonstrate the CFTC’s activity and effectiveness, urging that “there needs to be no more FUD about what’s happening on the other side of town.”

The roundtable featured panels on market structure and innovation, discussing extended trading hours, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and crypto assets, with participation from major crypto firms like Kraken, Robinhood, and Crypto.com.

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On the sidelines, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins labeled crypto as the agency’s “top priority right now,” identifying asset tokenization as a key regulatory focus. He cautioned that establishing proper guardrails could take one to two years, noting its significant potential.

Earlier discussions in the year aimed to harmonize rules to accommodate increasing crypto adoption.

Tensions Rise Over Classification of Tokenized Securities

The crypto X community has reignited the debate over the classification of tokenized securities, sparked by tensions during the joint panel. Traditional finance representatives resisted innovation exemptions and supported strict fungibility requirements under Reg NMS.

Crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro argued for fungibility of tokenized securities. In response, former regulatory adviser Justin Slaughter questioned the notion that these instruments are inherently derivatives, suggesting they could represent either the underlying asset or an idealized version. Shapiro contended that such ambiguity may stem from poor tokenization practices through SPVs compared to more native approaches like Superstate or MetaLeX.