On 18 November 2025, Caroline D. Pham, Acting Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, delivered a keynote address at the FIA EXPO, outlining the Commission’s strategic direction on derivatives market structure, blockchain technology, tokenization, and digital asset regulation. The address positioned the United States at what she described as a historic inflection point comparable to the electronification of markets in the 1970s and 1980s.
Opening her remarks, Acting Chairman Pham reflected on the regulatory transformation undertaken since January 2025, stating that it had been “an honor to usher in a new era of innovation and market structure”, pointing to concrete developments including perpetual-style futures, extended and round-the-clock trading, prediction markets, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Crypto Sprint initiative.
Drawing a direct parallel with earlier eras of financial modernisation, she characterised blockchain technology and tokenization not as peripheral innovations but as foundational infrastructure changes. She emphasised that distributed ledger systems represent a shift from siloed record-keeping to “shared, programmable, and verifiable systems of value”, capable of modernising collateral management, settlement, and market access without compromising core regulatory principles.
Elaborating on regulatory pragmatism, Acting Chairman Pham stated that innovation must remain anchored to market integrity, customer protection, and sound risk governance, while also recognising that transformational technologies mature through responsible experimentation and public-private collaboration rather than rigid prescriptive rulemaking.
She highlighted the work of the Global Markets Advisory Committee Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee, noting that only a year earlier it had concluded that tokenization is “simply another technological wrapper for existing assets”. That assessment had gained practical relevance as markets increasingly move towards continuous, twenty-four hour trading models supported by blockchain-based infrastructure.
Turning to institutional delivery, Acting Chairman Pham outlined the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s accomplishments since May 2025, including recalibration of swaps regulation, withdrawal of legacy Dodd-Frank era proposals, issuance of interpretative and no-action relief, modernisation of market surveillance through the Nasdaq Market Surveillance System, and the first joint innovation roundtable with the Securities and Exchange Commission in fifteen years.
A substantial portion of the address focused on digital asset policy. Acting Chairman Pham framed the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets as ushering in a “Golden Age of Crypto”, referencing its report “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology”. She argued that prolonged regulatory uncertainty and regulation by enforcement had driven United States innovators offshore, and that coordinated action by Congress and regulators was now reversing that trend.
Within this context, she detailed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s twelve-month Crypto Sprint, structured around three pillars: listed spot crypto trading on designated contract markets, the supervised use of tokenized collateral including stablecoins, and targeted technical amendments to Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulations to enable blockchain-based market infrastructure. She confirmed that listed spot crypto trading would be operational by year-end and that tokenized collateral guidance would follow shortly thereafter, with clearing implementation expected in 2026.
Acting Chairman Pham also addressed cross-border market access, advocating for substituted compliance, mutual recognition, and passporting to prevent fragmentation. She highlighted the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s reaffirmation of its longstanding framework for foreign boards of trade, positioning it as the most efficient mechanism to safely onshore global digital asset liquidity under existing law.
A technical segment examined tokenized collateral, tokenized money market funds, and qualified payment stablecoins. She described collateral management as the “killer app” for stablecoins, arguing that blockchain technology could deliver real-time collateral mobility, reduce settlement risk, and materially improve capital efficiency without altering the underlying risk profile of assets. She also addressed the implications of the GENIUS Act, signalling openness to public input on how Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules should treat qualified payment stablecoins as margin and settlement assets.
Concluding her address, Acting Chairman Pham returned to first principles, stating that every major financial advance has been driven by integrity, collaboration, and discipline. She argued that blockchain and tokenization, approached responsibly, offer the opportunity to make United States markets “more efficient, more transparent, more competitive, and more innovative”, while preserving the trust on which they depend.
Providing one of the clearest articulations to date of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s pro-innovation, technology-neutral approach. For derivatives exchanges, crypto platforms, clearinghouses, and institutional market participants, it’s a shift towards integration of digital assets within the existing United States regulatory perimeter, with global coordination and legal certainty as the guiding objectives.
(Source: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opapham19)
