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The Blockchain Association has filed comments with the SEC and CFTC urging the two agencies to coordinate on a regulatory framework that would allow equity perpetuals to trade in U.S. markets. The trade group argues these products currently trade exclusively offshore, depriving American markets of price discovery and leaving investors without U.S. oversight protections. The association recommends using the existing joint framework for security futures and proposes a technology-neutral approach focused on regulatory outcomes such as transparency, auditability, and customer asset protection. The filing responds to a June 2026 Federal Register request for comment on swap definitions and carries no binding effect. The group warns that continued regulatory ambiguity could keep liquidity, jobs, and innovation offshore, while coordinated oversight could give platforms clearer compliance expectations.
Key Elements
The Blockchain Association is pressing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to establish a coordinated regulatory framework that would allow equity perpetuals to trade in U.S. markets, arguing that clearer rules could pull offshore liquidity, price discovery, and related economic activity under American oversight.
The trade group filed comments with both agencies this week in response to a joint request for comment on the further definition of swap and security-based swap, published in the Federal Register in June 2026. The filing carries no binding effect, functioning as input the regulators may weigh rather than a determination.
Equity perpetuals are perpetual futures contracts referencing equities or equity indexes. They never expire and are held open through periodic funding payments between longs and shorts. Because the reference asset is a stock, the product straddles two legal categories at once, inviting overlapping jurisdiction between the SEC and the CFTC.
“These products currently trade exclusively offshore,” the association said in its submission. As a result, American markets do not capture price discovery from these instruments, and offshore trading leaves them outside the protections associated with U.S. oversight.
The group argued that regulators can address the issue under existing law without waiting for new legislation. It specifically recommended using the existing joint framework for security futures and urged the agencies to apply current authorities for novel derivatives where appropriate.
The association also proposed a technology-neutral framework based on regulatory outcomes rather than specific market infrastructure. Under that approach, rules would focus on the protections required—including transparency, auditability, market surveillance, customer asset protection, financial integrity, and operational resilience—while giving market participants flexibility in how they meet those standards.
The filing noted that blockchain-based systems could help support those requirements, offering market participants more choices around market infrastructure. The group framed coordination as the practical path forward, warning that prolonged ambiguity could keep liquidity, jobs, market data, and innovation offshore.
The submission lands amid broader industry efforts to establish regulatory certainty. The Blockchain Association has separately pushed the SEC for more flexible crypto rules and backed Custodia Bank’s Supreme Court bid for access to the Federal Reserve’s master account system.
The memorandum of understanding the SEC and CFTC announced between the agencies signals that closer inter-agency cooperation is already underway. For issuers and traders, the practical stakes concern product design and market access: clearer supervisory expectations would make it easier to structure offerings without hedging against conflicting rules.
For <a href="https://xpertsstudio.com/bitcoin-rebounds-on-debt-fears-digital-gold-appeal/” title=”Bitcoin Rebounds on Debt Fears, Digital Gold Appeal”>Bitcoin specifically, the outcome matters less for on-chain fundamentals, where hashrate and difficulty adjustments proceed on their own cadence regardless of Washington, than for the market-structure rails that determine how Bitcoin-adjacent derivatives are listed and supervised in the United States.
The agencies have not yet acted on the filing. The Blockchain Association said the SEC and CFTC now have an opportunity to establish clearer rules, urging both agencies to coordinate rather than leave equity perpetuals outside U.S. markets.
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Source: finance.biggo.com