CFTC and SEC start writing crypto rules under existing law after the Senate blocks the Clarity Act

Selig's phrase on CNBC, eight days after the vote, was "it's go time" ^[1]. His legal argument is that the CFTC's existing statutory authority gives it room to act without Congress ^[3]. Tyler Warner, who writes Decrypt's Morning Minute newsletter, called the week after the vote "the busiest stretch of US crypto policy in years, and none of it required a bill" ^[20].

Warner lists five agency actions. Sorted by what applies to anyone today, they split two, two and one ^[12]. The SEC exemption and the CFTC wallet letter are already in effect ^[4][5]. The CFTC's two prerules and the SEC's custody proposal are with the White House and OMB ^[6][7]. The fifth was an SEC roundtable on 24-hour trading, with NYSE, Nasdaq and DTCC attending ^[11]. The newsletter does not describe what the prerules contain, so the "focused on perps" label in its summary is Decrypt's reading of where Selig is heading ^[21].

The only acquisition in the newsletter with a price attached bought licences. MoonPay agreed to buy North Capital for more than $60 million in stock, and what it gets is a set of SEC registrations: broker-dealer, transfer agent, trading and advisory ^[13]. As Decrypt describes it, the SEC exemption lets tokenized US stocks trade on public blockchains without exchange registration for five years ^[4]. On that description, the exemption does not cover the licences MoonPay is buying. A company paying more than $60 million for registrations while an exemption is in force is either covering what the exemption leaves out or protecting itself against the day the five-year term ends. The deal as reported fits either reading. NYSE's agreement to distribute tokenized US stocks and ETFs through Blockchain.com to more than 44 million accounts in 70-plus jurisdictions still needs regulatory approval ^[14].

Warner calls Hyperliquid and Lighter the clear winners from a CFTC perps regime. He points to LIT's all-time high of $5.40 and to HYPE trading within 1-2% of its own record ^[15]. He wrote that "it's just a matter of time" before the two get a full green light ^[19]. The same newsletter's price table shows HYPE down 5% at $91 on a day bitcoin fell 3% to $83.4k ^[16]. The token Warner's thesis favours did 2 percentage points worse than the benchmark ^[17]. Kalshi, meanwhile, denied being under CFTC investigation after the Wall Street Journal reported that the agency was examining its ether perp trading. A spokesperson said the patterns are typical of liquidity incentive programs ^[18].

Three paths are open. In the first, the prerules become proposed rules that create the contract-market category Warner describes, and Hyperliquid and Lighter join it ^[6][9]. In the second, the category arrives on terms those venues decline. In the third, the drafts stall at the White House, and the week's lasting output is one five-year exemption and one no-action letter ^[4][5]. I think the exemption and the licence purchases are the parts of this week that will still matter in a year, and that a CFTC perps rulebook is further off than LIT's record high implies. That view would be wrong if the CFTC published a proposal that Hyperliquid or Lighter publicly committed to register under.