CFTC Staff Let Futures Brokers Invest Customer Funds in Tokenized Assets, Keep Records Onchain

Futures brokers and clearinghouses regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can invest customer money in tokenized versions of assets they are already allowed to buy, and registered firms can keep their required records on a blockchain, CFTC staff said in guidance released on Thursday.

Three CFTC divisions, Market Participants, Market Oversight, and Clearing and Risk, added four new entries to a set of frequently asked questions on crypto assets that staff first published on March 20.

“I’m pleased to see staff update these frequently asked questions consistent with the agency’s ongoing efforts to provide regulatory clarity for the crypto industry,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said in a statement.

CFTC Regulation 1.25 limits what futures commission merchants (FCMs) and derivatives clearing organizations (DCOs) may do with customer funds to a list of permitted investments. Under the new answer, a tokenized form of one of those investments counts if four conditions hold: the underlying asset is itself permitted, the token gives holders legal and economic rights “the same or functionally equivalent” to those of the traditional version, the holding meets the rule’s liquidity, concentration and maturity limits, and the tokens sit with an acceptable depository.

For tokenized government money market funds, staff added that they would expect the firm to get a written acknowledgment letter from the fund’s custodian.

Payment stablecoins still do not qualify. An earlier answer in the same document says FCMs may not invest customer funds in them, because the permitted-investment list was left unchanged.

The other three new answers cover recordkeeping. Staff noted that Regulation 1.31, the CFTC’s general recordkeeping rule, and Regulation 45.2, which governs swap data records, are technology neutral. A firm can create and keep its required records onchain as long as it fully meets those rules, and staff said they would not object if it chose not to keep offchain copies.

Firms that use a public, permissionless blockchain should have systems that let them produce records for CFTC inspection even if the network or its block explorer is unavailable, the FAQ said.

The document said the recordkeeping rules had come up in responses to a June 16 CFTC request for information tied to Executive Order 14405, citing comments from dYdX Labs and two industry groups, the Blockchain Association and the Solana Policy Institute. The answers reflect staff views and are not binding rules.

The update builds on December 2025 staff letters that opened the door to bitcoin, ether and payment stablecoins as margin collateral. Selig pledged on Sept. 16 to write crypto rules under the agency’s existing authority after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate.

Related Listen: How Tokenized Stocks Could Undercut Interactive Brokers’ 77% Profit Margin

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