The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said futures brokers and clearinghouses may invest customer funds in tokenized versions of already-permitted assets and maintain official records on blockchain, according to an FAQ update issued September 24.
The guidance applies to futures commission merchants and derivatives clearing organizations that meet Regulation 1.25 standards governing customer fund segregation. The CFTC did not require these firms to adopt tokenization, but removed barriers that had left the practice in legal limbo. Tokenized Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and other regulated instruments can now be held in place of their conventional forms under the agency's existing rulebook.
The clearinghouse JPMorgan Chase has already deployed a tokenized Treasury settlement system called Onyx. Competitors including Interactive Brokers have experimented with blockchain-based recordkeeping for years. The CFTC's move formalizes what large derivatives firms had been requesting since 2023: permission to treat digital asset versions of permitted collateral as equivalent to paper or book-entry forms, so long as custody and segregation rules remained intact.
Blockchain recordkeeping, the second part of the guidance, allows futures firms to log transactions and positions on distributed ledgers while maintaining CFTC audit trails. The agency said records must remain retrievable, timestamped, and subject to standard compliance audits. No specific blockchain platform or technology standard was mandated.
The permission is narrow. It does not extend to direct holdings of unpermitted assets like bitcoin or ether in customer accounts. Nor does it create a regulatory fast track for tokenized derivatives themselves. The guidance applies only to tokenized versions of assets the CFTC already permits futures firms to hold: Treasury securities, government bonds, precious metals, and commodities.
A CFTC representative said the update was intended to clarify existing law rather than impose new restrictions. The agency issued similar guidance in 2024 regarding digital representations of regulated assets and custody standards.
Futures firms that adopt tokenization must still comply with segregation requirements, insurance rules, and reporting deadlines that apply to all customer funds. The change removes interpretive uncertainty that had forced some firms to choose between traditional custody and blockchain experiments; it does not lower the baseline for protection.
The September update follows months of industry requests and two failed Congressional bills aimed at clarifying the legal status of tokenized securities and commodities in regulated accounts. The CFTC's move does not require Congressional action and applies only to futures firms, not to spot markets or securities brokers under SEC jurisdiction.
JPMorgan's Onyx has processed roughly $136 billion in monthly settlements as of mid-2026. If other clearinghouses and brokers adopt similar systems under the new guidance, blockchain settlement volumes in derivatives markets could rise significantly. The scale of adoption will depend on whether futures firms find economic savings in blockchain-based clearing relative to existing systems.
What moves next is whether the SEC issues parallel guidance for securities brokers handling tokenized government bonds or equity collateral. The SEC has been monitoring the CFTC's action and has not yet issued similar permissions to securities markets.
