CFTC staff opened a digital-asset collateral pilot for derivatives

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened a supervised path for registered futures commission merchants to treat certain digital assets as customer margin collateral on December 8, 2025. The staff action initially covered payment stablecoins, bitcoin and ether, pairing the permission with reporting, valuation and incident-notification conditions.

The development mattered because collateral is core infrastructure for derivatives markets. Margin secures a customer's futures or cleared-swaps obligations; changing which assets can count toward it can alter how crypto-native firms connect to regulated U.S. markets. But the December 8 action was not a blanket approval of digital assets, a change in statute or proof that any merchant had begun accepting them.

A pilot built through no-action relief

CFTC Market Participants Division Letter 25-40 said staff would not recommend enforcement against a registered futures commission merchant, or FCM, for counting qualifying non-securities digital assets in specified margin and segregation calculations, provided the letter's conditions were met. It also permitted an FCM to place its own qualifying payment stablecoins into segregated customer accounts as residual interest, subject to applicable capital charges.

Before relying on the position, an FCM had to notify the division and state when it would begin accepting digital-asset collateral. For the first three months of reliance, acceptance was limited to payment stablecoins, bitcoin and ether. The agency's announcement specifically named USDC alongside BTC and ETH, while the operative letter defined a broader, conditions-based payment-stablecoin category.

Reporting formed the experimental part of the structure. For three months beginning with the calendar month after an FCM filed its notice, it had to report weekly totals by asset and by each of three customer-account classes: futures, cleared swaps and accounts governed by CFTC Regulation 30.7. During the first three months of reliance, a firm also had to promptly notify staff of a significant operational or system problem, disruption, failure or cybersecurity incident affecting use of the collateral.

Existing risk rules still applied

The relief did not allow an FCM simply to assign face value to every token. Where a registered derivatives clearing organization accepted an asset, the FCM generally had to use that organization's valuation and haircut; if multiple clearing organizations were involved, the highest applicable haircut governed. In a specified case where a non-stablecoin digital asset was not accepted by an eligible clearing organization, the letter required a haircut of at least 20% and the FCM's own fair-value and risk-management process.

Staff emphasized that customer-fund segregation, permitted-depository, permitted-investment and risk-management rules remained in force. An FCM still had to determine that collateral was readily marketable and highly liquid, monitor liquidity and valuation, and preserve the separation designed to protect customer property if an intermediary failed.

A companion guidance letter addressed tokenized real-world assets such as Treasury securities and money-market-fund shares. It treated the rules as technology-neutral: putting an asset on a blockchain did not erase the need to test legal enforceability, custody, control, liquidity, valuation and operational risk for the particular tokenization structure.

What changed—and what did not

The division also withdrew 2020 Staff Advisory 20-34 in its entirety, effective December 8, 2025. Staff said intervening market developments, its tokenized-collateral initiative and enactment of the GENIUS Act had made the earlier advisory outdated.

The defensible event-day conclusion is narrower than the celebratory statements included in the agency release. CFTC staff created conditional regulatory room to test digital assets in derivatives collateral management and gather operational data. Letter 25-40 represented staff's enforcement position, not necessarily the Commission's view; changed facts could void it, and staff retained authority to modify or terminate it. The letter also said the relief would expire when a Commission action governing FCM acceptance and custody of digital-asset collateral became effective. On December 8, adoption levels, customer balances and the pilot's performance remained unknown.