The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has submitted a proposal to regulate crypto asset transactions and crypto asset markets to the White House Office of Management and Budget, according to a pending regulatory review notice posted on an OMB website.

The proposed rule, which has not yet been published, reached OMB on Thursday, Sept. 17, according to the notice. OMB review is a standard step before a federal agency can publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register and open it to public comment.

Bloomberg flagged the notice in a Friday, Sept. 18 report, noting that the CFTC would have become the primary regulator of cryptocurrency under the Clarity Act, which failed to advance in the Senate earlier in the week.

What did the Clarity Act's failure change?

The market structure bill lost a procedural vote in the Senate on Tuesday, Sept. 15. The outcome left the crypto industry facing another indefinite stretch of operating in the United States without comprehensive federal market structure legislation.

Under the bill's framework, the CFTC would have taken the lead role in regulating digital asset spot and derivatives markets, with the Securities and Exchange Commission retaining authority over assets deemed securities. With the legislation stalled, jurisdictional questions revert to the agencies' existing statutory powers — the Commodity Exchange Act for the CFTC, federal securities law for the SEC.

The practical consequence is rulemaking by agency rather than by statute. Agency rules can be challenged in court, revised by future commissions or overridden by later legislation, which makes the resulting framework less durable than a congressional act. It can, however, move faster than a legislative process that has now stalled twice in the Senate.

How did the CFTC get here?

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said in August that he would ask the agency's staff to find ways to codify market structure for digital assets. He delivered his most direct statement on the plan at the Innovation Advisory Committee Conference in Washington, D.C.

"We owe it to the American people to do so," Selig said. "President Trump promised to deliver a crypto asset market structure, and we will help him deliver if Congress will not."

Selig's position, laid out before the Senate vote, was explicit: if Congress did not pass the Clarity Act, the CFTC would use its existing authorities to begin establishing a crypto asset market regime. The OMB filing is the first concrete procedural step in that direction.

Selig drew attention to a report on the OMB filing by sharing it in a post on X, accompanied by an eyes emoji. The agency has not yet disclosed the rule's substance, and the text will not become public until OMB completes its review and the CFTC publishes the proposal.

What does the industry expect?

Industry participants did not treat the Senate vote as the end of the rulemaking path. Executives from both the crypto sector and the banking sector said after the failed vote that lawmakers still need to act and that regulatory certainty still matters regardless of which branch delivers it.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a Tuesday post on X that the cryptocurrency industry cannot wait on Congress anymore.

"The SEC and CFTC have the tools they need to create clear rules under existing authority, and I expect will begin working on this in earnest," Armstrong said. "So clarity is coming to crypto regardless."

The SEC has been developing its own parallel framework for digital asset trading under Chairman Paul Atkins, meaning the two agencies may end up dividing the market administratively along lines similar to those the Clarity Act would have codified.

What happens next?

The timeline now depends on OMB. Executive Order 12866 gives OMB up to 90 days to review a significant rule, with a possible 30-day extension, before the CFTC can publish the proposal and begin the public comment period. That puts publication somewhere in the December-to-January window at the latest, assuming a standard review cycle.

Once published, the proposal will face a comment period, potential revision and commissioner votes before any final rule takes effect. In the interim, the market structure question the Clarity Act was designed to answer stays unresolved in statute, and the CFTC's pending proposal becomes the primary document to watch.