CFTC’s Crypto Rulemaking Filing Reaches White House Sept. 17, Two Outlets Confirm

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sent a crypto market rulemaking action to the White House for review, a filing confirmed independently by Bitcoin Magazine, Cointelegraph and CoinDesk on September 18. All three name the same title: “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.” The move comes three days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act on September 15, leaving the agency to rely on its existing statutory authority rather than new legislation.

What three outlets independently verified

The core fact here is simple and well corroborated: a CFTC action bearing that exact title landed at the Office of Management and Budget for interagency review. None of the three reports describes the substance of the planned rules, because the filing itself does not disclose that detail.

Also confirmed by two of the three outlets is CFTC Chair Mike Selig’s public reaction to the Senate vote. He posted on X the day after the CLARITY Act stalled that the agency was “locked in and ready to ship” rules for what he called “the new frontier of finance.” Selig had signaled this path before the vote, telling the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee conference on August 20 that the agency would proceed with rulemaking whether or not Congress acted.

One source, one detail: the “prerule” stage

Cointelegraph, citing the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs database directly, reports the filing was received on September 17 and is listed at the “prerule” stage. That classification matters for anyone tracking the timeline: it is the earliest formal step in the federal rulemaking process, before an agency issues a proposed rule for public comment. This detail appears in only one of the three reports reviewed here. It is not contradicted elsewhere, but it also has not been independently repeated by a second outlet, so it should be read as sourced to a single filing record rather than as confirmed by parallel reporting.

Similarly single-sourced is a quote attributed to SEC Chair Paul Atkins, who reportedly said the securities regulator would move ahead “with or without legislation.” The underlying claim, that the SEC is not waiting on Congress, is echoed more loosely across the coverage, but the exact wording traces to one outlet.

Parallel action at the SEC, day-of overlap

Two of the three reports describe both agencies acting in the same window. The CFTC issued a no-action position covering providers of passive software, a category that includes noncustodial wallet interfaces. The SEC, separately, announced temporary exemptions for platforms facilitating onchain trading of tokenized securities. Cryptaur has previously covered the CFTC’s earlier passive-software exemption for wallet developers, which this latest no-action position appears to extend.

Read more: CFTC’s Selig Vows to Ship Crypto Rules After Clarity Act Misses 60 Votes

Why the timeline matters more than the title

A prerule filing is a procedural marker, not a finished framework. It tells traders and builders that a process has started at OMB, not what the rules will require or when they will take effect. The gap between this filing and any enforceable regulation could run for months, based on how prerule actions have typically moved through OIRA review in the past.

What is verifiable today is narrower than the headlines suggest. The filing exists, its title is confirmed, and it followed the CLARITY Act’s failure by two days. The stage classification, the exact submission date,

Sources

• bitcoinmagazine.com
• cointelegraph.com
• coindesk.com