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On December 4, 2025 Commodity Futures Trading Commission Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham announced that, for the first time, CFTC-regulated commodity exchanges have been authorized to list and facilitate trading in “spot” cryptocurrency contracts.
On November 21, 2025 the CFTC’s Market Participants Division issued Letter No. 25-37, a no-action letter providing CPO-registration relief to operators of certain credit risk transfer transactions structured through special purpose vehicles. The letter responds to a request submitted by the Structured Finance Association on behalf of prudentially regulated financial institutions that use CRTs to manage balance-sheet risk by transferring the risk to sophisticated investors via SPVs. It states that, subject to specified conditions, MPD will not recommend enforcement against U.S.-regulated banks, their affiliates, or any other person involved in setting up or operating such SPVs for failure to register as commodity pool operators.
Cadwalader partner Peter Malyshev was recently quoted in The Capitol Forum discussing the emerging regulatory landscape for sports prediction markets, including how companies are preparing for increased scrutiny at both the federal and state levels.
On September 30, 2025, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) staff issued an advisory (the “Advisory”) in anticipation of the impending government shutdown. However, in essence, the Advisory has very little to do with the preparation for the government shutdown, but instead specifically addresses what CFTC-regulated market participants should consider in connection with “facilitating the trading and clearing of sport-related event contracts for customers, market participants, and clearing members.”
Recent years have seen the emergence of blockchain projects seeking to tokenize an ever-expanding range of assets that are not blockchain-native – the so-called tokenized real world assets (“RWAs”) phenomenon. Tokenized commodities have emerged as one of the most important categories of tokenized RWAs.
This paper will briefly examine the structure and use of tokenized commodities, and their interface with commodities regulation.
On July 21, 2025, a U.S. district court judge in Texas stated in an opinion and order that “section 1 [of the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”)] does not encompass precious metals [such as gold] as commodities because they are neither agricultural products nor movie tickets.” The judge cited a lot of authority in his opinion, but another quote comes to mind from Voltaire: “opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues and earthquakes.” Indeed, the law is very well established on the matter that gold is a “commodity” under § 1a(9) of the CEA.
In addition to everything relating to cryptos, event contracts are one of the hottest topics in Washington at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Hopefully, when former CFTC commissioner Brian Quintenz is confirmed in the U.S. Senate for CFTC chairmanship, there will be greater certainty for event contracts, which are derivative contracts typically structured as binary options based on certain outcomes of events, such as political elections or sports games. These outcomes are recognized as “commodities.”
On May 21, 2025, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Market Participants Division and Division of Market Oversight issued an interpretative letter clarifying the application of certain cross-border definitions of “U.S. persons” under the CFTC Regulations.
On May 19, 2025, the International Organization of Securities Commissions published its Final Reports on Finfluencers, Online Imitative Trading Practices and Digital Engagement Practices, as part of its Roadmap for Retail Investor Online Safety. The Reports identify the good practices that regulators should consider when managing potential risks to retail investors that may arise from the evolving securities and derivatives markets towards a trend of “retailification” – i.e., the significantly growing transaction volumes of retail participants in these markets.
In the post-pandemic world, several trends are developing that will fundamentally change the way financial market participants manage commercial risk or trade traditional and rapidly evolving novel assets, while new classes of participants are necessitating a fundamental rethink of how Federal and State regulators ensure safety and soundness of U.S. financial markets. This article identifies these trends and explores how these changes are likely to affect future regulations and compliance needs.