Selig says he will write the crypto rules himself if CLARITY stays stalled

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig said Thursday that he has directed agency staff to begin exploring rules codifying a CFTC market structure for crypto assets using the agency's existing authorities ^[1]. He said it at the inaugural meeting of the CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee, and framed it as the fallback if the CLARITY Act does not move: if the bill continues to stall, he said, the CFTC will use existing authority to begin establishing a regime for crypto asset markets ^[5][2].

The substance is specific enough to plan against. On one track, the agency is exploring rulemaking that would let current registrants and currently unregistered crypto exchanges be designated as a type of designated contract market called a crypto asset market, and offer crypto trading on a leveraged or margin basis ^[6]. On the other, Selig said he has directed staff to engage with developers of on-chain finance protocols on how they can offer those protocols legally in the United States, which he called "future-proofing developer protections once and for all" ^[7].

Timing is conditional, and Selig said so. "We're going to give CLARITY its breathing room for a vote," he said, adding that if Democrats cannot support a bipartisan product and send a fair version of the bill to the president's desk, "rest assured, I will direct CFTC staff to move swiftly to propose these rules for the industry" ^[3]. He attributed the delay to Democrat obstruction ^[4]. The bill's odds lengthened after it failed to get a vote before the Senate's August recess ^[8], having already been held up for weeks by Republican and Democratic disagreements over enforcement ^[9].

The part operators should sit with is Selig's own argument against his fallback. He said legislation would make the rules harder for a future administration to reverse ^[10], and that passing CLARITY is the surest way to prevent "another Gary Gensler from running a rogue campaign of lawfare" against crypto companies ^[11]. Read plainly: a rulemaking is the instrument available, not the instrument he prefers, because the next chair inherits the same discretion. A firm that registers as a crypto asset market and builds margin systems around a CFTC rule is building on a foundation the agency can revisit. That is a different capital-planning problem than building on a statute.

The pattern is not confined to one agency. The SEC has proposed rules dubbed "Regulation Crypto Assets" that include two exemptions letting certain crypto companies raise capital without traditional securities registration ^[12], and Chair Paul Atkins said in a recorded video Tuesday that the proposal "sits at the center" of the agency's agenda and that under current statutory authority "we are acting" while still supporting the bill ^[13][14]. Both regulators are also working on Project Crypto, a joint effort to build a taxonomy separating crypto assets that are securities from those that are not ^[15]. So the working framework is arriving from two agencies at once, each saying it would rather have a law ^[18].

Watch whether an actual notice of proposed rulemaking appears rather than staff exploration, and how long "breathing room" runs before it does. Watch the Senate calendar. And watch the DCM designation route specifically, because stretching an existing contract-market category to cover spot crypto exchanges is the piece most exposed to challenge. President Trump urged Congress on Wednesday to pass a fair version of the bill ^[16], and said Selig is working to bring the decentralized perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid into the United States ^[17]. That second item is the near-term test of whether the fallback has teeth.