CFTC’s Selig cautions agencies will ‘write all the rules’ if Clarity Act stalls

The chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Michael Selig, has warned that regulators risk becoming the de facto authors of America’s crypto rulebook if Congress fails to pass the Clarity Act, according to The Block. The remark underscores growing unease among US officials that legislative gridlock is pushing rulemaking authority away from elected lawmakers and towards agency discretion.

A warning about regulatory drift

Selig cautioned that if the Clarity Act stalls in Congress, regulators will end up “writing all the rules” for digital assets themselves, The Block reports. The comment reflects a longstanding tension in Washington over how to divide oversight of crypto markets between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, a split that has fuelled years of jurisdictional disputes and enforcement-led policymaking.

The Clarity Act is the market structure legislation designed to settle that division by giving clearer statutory definitions of which digital assets fall under commodities law and which fall under securities law. Its progress through Congress has been slow, leaving exchanges, custodians and institutional investors to navigate a patchwork of guidance rather than fixed legal categories.

Why the distinction matters for markets

For institutional participants, the absence of statutory clarity has practical consequences. Firms seeking to list tokens, offer custody or build derivatives products must currently rely on shifting agency interpretations rather than a settled framework, a dynamic that has already shaped decisions by exchanges and index providers about which assets to support.

Selig’s intervention suggests the CFTC itself would prefer Congress to legislate rather than leave the task to regulators acting through rulemaking or enforcement. That preference echoes concerns raised elsewhere in Washington that agency-led rulemaking, absent clear congressional direction, risks producing rules that are more easily challenged in court and more vulnerable to reversal with changes in administration.

Implications for European observers

The debate carries relevance beyond US borders. European regulators and firms operating under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation have watched the American legislative stalemate closely, given the extent to which US market structure decisions influence global liquidity, listings and institutional participation in digital assets.

A continued delay to the Clarity Act would likely prolong the current environment in which the CFTC and SEC each interpret their authority independently, a state of affairs Selig’s remarks suggest he views as a poor substitute for legislative certainty.

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