SEC and CFTC leaders put crypto harmonization on a joint agenda

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission set out a joint regulatory-harmonization agenda on September 5, 2025, placing crypto trading, decentralized finance and perpetual contracts inside a broader effort to coordinate the two U.S. market regulators.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline Pham announced a joint roundtable for September 29, 2025. Their statement identified possible coordination on continuous trading, event contracts, perpetual derivatives, portfolio margining and exemptions for decentralized-finance activity. The development mattered because products spanning securities and commodities rules had often encountered different definitions, venue requirements and supervisory expectations at the two agencies.

The statement was a policy agenda, not an adopted rule. It created no exemption, approved no exchange, classified no token and changed no statutory boundary between the SEC and CFTC.

From spot trading to a wider agenda

The September 5 statement followed a September 2 joint staff statement about certain spot crypto products. On September 2, the agencies’ market-oversight divisions said SEC- and CFTC-registered exchanges were not prohibited from facilitating trading in certain spot commodity products. Staff invited market participants to discuss possible exchange trading with either agency.

Atkins and Pham described that staff action as a first step. They proposed exploring common product and venue definitions, streamlined reporting and data standards, aligned capital and margin frameworks, and coordinated use of each agency’s existing exemptive authority.

That sequence was institutionally important. The September 2 record addressed staff views about a defined path for certain spot products. The September 5 record moved to leadership-level priorities across market structure. Neither document meant that every registered securities or derivatives exchange could immediately list every crypto asset without further analysis, filings or compliance work.

Perpetuals, DeFi and self-custody

Perpetual contracts received explicit attention. The statement described these no-expiry derivatives as common in offshore crypto markets and said the agencies could consider steps to bring qualifying products onto SEC- or CFTC-regulated platforms with investor and customer protections. That was prospective language. It did not authorize a perpetual contract or establish leverage, clearing, margin or risk-management terms.

For decentralized finance, the officials said both agencies were prepared to consider innovation exemptions or safe harbors for peer-to-peer spot, leveraged, margined and other transactions, including perpetuals conducted through DeFi protocols, while longer-term rulemaking advanced. They also characterized self-custody as a core American value and said a path remained open for peer-to-peer spot trading.

Those statements marked a change in regulatory posture, but their legal force was limited. An expression of willingness to consider relief is not the relief itself. Any usable exemption would still require a formal instrument defining eligible parties, activities, conditions and protections.

Continuous markets and portfolio margin

The officials also used crypto’s continuous trading model as context for considering longer hours in other U.S. markets. They acknowledged that operational feasibility, liquidity and investor protection could make expansion more suitable for some asset classes than others. The record therefore did not promise universal round-the-clock securities trading.

On portfolio margining, the statement argued that recognizing economically offsetting positions across SEC- and CFTC-regulated product lines could reduce duplicative collateral demands. The stated goal was more efficient use of capital while retaining resilient clearing and risk controls. Implementation would require resolving how broker-dealers, futures commission merchants, clearing members and clearinghouses operate across separate statutory regimes.

What was knowable on September 5

The verified change on September 5, 2025 was coordination at the top of both agencies and a public agenda for the September 29 roundtable. Contemporaneous reporting confirmed that Atkins and Pham presented a united front and discussed agency capacity for continuous markets, but reporting did not convert the agenda into binding law.

No cryptocurrency price, return, trading-volume or fund-flow claim can be attributed to the announcement from the cited records. The consequential point was institutional: two federal regulators publicly committed to examine overlapping crypto-market questions together, while leaving the operative details, legal tests and implementation path unresolved.