The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has created a new Innovation Task Force to address the concerns in the crypto ecosystem and develop a regulatory framework catering to crypto, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. The main motto is to have “clear rules of the road” for actual novel builders of products and tech in the U.S. derivatives markets.
CFTC Chair announces innovation task force
CFTC Chair Michael Selig announced the plans for the Task Force at the Digital Asset Summit in New York. According to him, the force is designed to build a structure around which the team of founders, developers, and other builders can engage with CFTC staff.
“By establishing a clear regulatory framework for innovators building on the new frontier of finance, we can foster responsible innovation at home and ensure American market participants are not left on the sidelines,” he said in a statement published on Tuesday.
Concerns were addressed around prediction markets and event contracts and the discussions over the bipartisan bill, while the regulators actively hovered over the fraudulent cases cornering AI and autonomous systems. The Innovation Task Force and the Innovation Advisory Committee, formed in February, will work with CFTC to work with these concerns, developing a clear regulatory framework.
Working towards a more unified crypto oversight
The press release ended with a note: “Michael J. Passalacqua, senior advisor to the Chairman, will lead the Innovation Task Force.” He joined the organization this year after working with international law firm Simpson Thascher & Bartlett.
The Innovation Advisory Committee has over 30 members, including the CEOs of Kalshi and Nasdaq, Tarek Mansour and Adena Friedman, respectively. The new force will work with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its crypto task force, launched last year, which held multiple roundtable discussions on DeFi and tokenization.
The CFTC’s announcement comes after the SEC’s interpretive notice published previously, which indicated that the majority of crypto assets would not be classified as securities under federal law. SEC Chair Paul Atkins calls it a temporary fix.
In a separate recent development, the CFTC announced on March 12 that it is inviting public feedback on whether to revise or introduce new rules for event contracts traded on prediction markets due to illegal politically-linked contracts and sport-linked contracts.
