The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has asked the public what rules should govern retail crypto trading in the United States, but the question cannot be answered yet. The agency issued an advance notice on October 5, 2026, outlining a possible set of federal rules for crypto transactions offered to ordinary customers, plus a new registration category for exchanges that would be called a “crypto asset market.” Comments are due 60 days after the notice appears in the Federal Register, and that publication date has not been announced. Nothing in the notice is a rule, and nothing in it changes how any crypto exchange operates today.
An advance notice of proposed rulemaking is the earliest public step in federal rulemaking. It tells the public what an agency is thinking about and asks for input before any rule text is drafted. In this case the CFTC says it will use the comments to inform potential future action, such as a rulemaking. That puts the notice well before any proposed rule, and further still from a final one that would carry legal force.
The three questions the CFTC put to the public
In Release No. 9307-26, the CFTC says it intends to build a framework of “fit-for-purpose rules” for retail commodity transactions involving crypto assets, which it calls CTXs. The notice asks how the commission can prevent abusive practices in crypto markets under a uniform national regime, how it can give market participants crypto-specific information on practices it considers best for compliance, and how it can write into rules a subcategory of designated contract market, the CFTC’s term for a regulated exchange, built for CTXs.
The legal hook is section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act. According to the notice itself, that section covers retail transactions that are leveraged, margined or financed, and it generally requires them to take place on a designated contract market. A transaction that results in actual delivery within 28 days is an exception under the statute, and the commission may set a longer period by rule. The notice says the CFTC has never adopted rules on how this section applies to crypto assets.
Comments must be in writing, and the CFTC says they will be posted publicly on Regulations.gov. The retail customers the framework would cover are people who buy crypto through exchanges and similar platforms, and the notice is aimed at how those platforms would be regulated.
The 60-day comment window starts only when the Federal Register publishes the notice, so its closing date is the number that moves next.
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Why the CFTC says state rules fall short
Today, retail crypto customers rely mainly on state regimes such as money transmitter licensing and New York’s BitLicense, the notice says. The CFTC argues those rules “do not protect retail customers in the same manner” as federal market regulation, because they lack requirements on orderly trading, conflicts of interest and market manipulation. It concludes that the varied state requirements “predictably failed” to protect retail crypto customers against the abuses that the federal commodities law targets.
One example the notice cites is the Voyager Digital collapse. State rules on how a firm may invest customer funds differ widely, and the notice contrasts them with the limits the CFTC places on investing customer money at the exchanges and brokers it oversees. The point the CFTC draws is that no single federal standard now governs how retail crypto platforms may use customer money once it is deposited.
Chairman Michael S. Selig has framed the effort as a break from enforcement-first regulation. In January 2026, the notice records, he said that “regulation by enforcement is dead.” In the October 5 announcement he said the “American people deserve clarity, certainty, and consumer protections in the crypto asset markets,” and that the commission will work to prevent fraudulent schemes such as FTX rather than only prosecuting them after the fact.
What happens once the notice is published
The release does not give a Federal Register citation, docket number or publication date, so the closing date for comments cannot be calculated. The notice carries Regulatory Identification Number 3038-AF80 and asks commenters to reference its title, “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.” Until publication, the only fixed date is October 5, when the CFTC announced the notice.
The filing rules are strict. The notice says comments should be submitted through one method only, must be in English, and are published without redaction, so personal or confidential business information should stay out of them. Comments sent by mail or hand delivery go to Christopher Kirkpatrick, Secretary of the Commission, at Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street NW, Washington, DC 20581. Regulations.gov is the method the CFTC prefers.
Reading and filing comments on the crypto rules
The CFTC keeps a public comments page that lists releases open for comment and the comments already filed. Once the notice is published in the Federal Register, that page and Regulations.gov will show the docket and the closing date. Until then, the October 5 release and the full text of the notice are the complete public record.
The notice leaves the hard questions for the comment period. The notice builds on the statute’s leverage trigger and its 28-day actual-delivery exception, and those are the legal lines any final rules would have to work within. Rulemaking questions go to rulemaking@cftc.gov, and the notice names CFTC staff contacts for them.
The test of the CFTC’s approach will come in what follows the comments. The agency has said only that the responses will inform potential future action, and a proposed rule with its own text would have to come before any final rule. For now, the October 5 notice sets the questions and Chairman Selig has set the direction, but no deadline, rule or registration category exists until the Federal Register publishes the notice.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
