Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission acting chair Caroline Pham said the agency already has sweeping authority over commodity markets and could use its existing framework to bring more crypto activity into federal oversight, following the failure of the Clarity Act last month.
Speaking at Token2049 in Singapore, Pham said the Commodity Exchange Act covers nearly every commodity market, aside from statutory exclusions including onions and movie box office receipts. Pham, now chief legal officer and chief administrative officer at MoonPay, argued that the CFTC’s principles-based model can accommodate emerging products without waiting for Congress to pass a crypto-specific market-structure law.
Her comments place the regulatory focus on agency rulemaking after Congress failed to advance the Clarity Act, which had sought to establish clearer federal lines between securities and commodities oversight for digital assets. The CFTC’s approach could give registered trading venues a federal route to offer certain crypto products, particularly leveraged retail transactions that have long operated amid a patchwork of state rules and offshore platforms.
CFTC rules target leveraged retail crypto activity
The CFTC, led by Chairman Michael Selig, has issued proposed rules touching crypto oversight, including an advanced notice associated with Regulation CAM and Regulation CTX. According to the agency’s proposal, the framework would address leveraged retail commodity transactions and offer a federal alternative to relying solely on state-level licensing regimes.
Pham linked the effort to the CFTC Crypto Sprint initiative she launched in 2025. That program opened a path for spot crypto trading on CFTC-registered exchanges, an approach that sought to apply familiar market safeguards to digital-asset trading rather than create a wholly separate system for crypto.
The regulatory question is especially consequential for platforms that offer customers borrowed exposure to cryptocurrencies. Under a provision added by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, leveraged, margined or financed retail commodity transactions generally must be conducted on a regulated exchange unless an exception applies. Pham said the CFTC did not enforce that provision for years, leaving uncertainty over how it should apply to retail crypto products.
A more active enforcement and rulemaking posture could raise the cost of offering high-leverage crypto products to U.S. customers while giving regulated venues a clearer basis for competing with offshore platforms. It would not automatically settle every jurisdictional dispute between the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly where a token’s legal status remains contested. Yet it would put the mechanics of trading — leverage, custody, settlement and exchange registration — closer to the center of the policy debate.
Pham also pointed to derivatives linked to artificial-intelligence compute as an example of how the Commodity Exchange Act can reach newly developing markets. Such contracts could allow participants to hedge or speculate on the cost and availability of computing capacity, much as commodity derivatives are used in other markets. Whether those products emerge at scale remains uncertain, but the example reflects the CFTC’s effort to frame its mandate as technology-neutral.
Tokenized deposits may suit wholesale settlement
Pham drew a distinction between stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits when discussing how blockchain-based settlement could work in institutional markets.
She said wholesale financial markets are better suited to tokenized deposits, which represent bank liabilities in a digital form, than to stablecoins. Her argument centered on the scale of cash required for fully atomic settlement — a process in which assets and payments exchange simultaneously — across a major trading day.
Pham estimated that real-time, atomic settlement of a single day’s activity on a blockchain would require roughly $15 trillion in cash. In practice, banks manage high transaction volumes through net settlement, offsetting obligations across counterparties and transferring only the remaining balance. That system sharply reduces the amount of cash that needs to move.
Tokenized deposits could bring programmable settlement features to that existing banking structure without requiring every transaction to be funded gross, or individually, in real time. The model also keeps wholesale payment flows within commercial-bank balance sheets, where regulated banks already manage credit, liquidity and counterparty risks.
The distinction carries practical consequences for blockchain projects aimed at capital markets. Stablecoins have become a common tool for moving value across crypto markets, but wholesale securities settlement has different liquidity demands and legal arrangements. Banks processing large institutional obligations may prefer a digital claim on a regulated deposit account over a token backed by reserve assets held elsewhere.
Listed tokenized shares face a different test
Pham said she expects the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq to list tokenized shares of companies and record trading activity and volume in the coming two years. She pointed to the SEC’s innovation exemption as a possible route for listed securities to trade on tokenized venues while remaining inside an SEC regulatory framework.
A tokenized share would represent an interest in an actual listed company, with issuer approval and the associated corporate rights. That differs from synthetic stock tokens, which can track a company’s price without being authorized by the issuer or conferring ownership rights. Pham referenced public comments by AMC Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron in drawing that boundary.
The separation could become increasingly relevant as established exchanges work with crypto-focused firms. Pham cited Nasdaq’s partnership with Payward and Intercontinental Exchange’s partnership with OKX as examples of legacy market operators exploring digital-asset infrastructure and distribution.
Tokenization alone does not remove the regulatory obligations attached to securities trading. Listed equities would still require rules on ownership records, corporate actions, market surveillance, custody, disclosure and investor protections. A regulated tokenized-share market would therefore look less like a crypto substitute for public equities and more like an updated delivery and settlement layer for existing exchange-listed securities.
Pham’s remarks suggest that the near-term contest in U.S. crypto policy may be less about creating a new legal category for every digital asset and more about determining which existing rules can be applied first. The CFTC’s proposed framework, if finalized, would test how far that strategy can reach in retail crypto trading while banks and exchanges separately explore tokenized forms of deposits and securities.
Curious how regulation shapes tokenized assets? Dive deeper into what are tokenized equities and how do they work next.
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