THE CFTC’S CRYPTO RULE IS STILL A NOTICE — COMMENTS CLOSE DECEMBER 14 — TD COWEN SAYS A FINAL RULE COULD TAKE UNTIL EARLY 2028

The CFTC’s advance notice on leveraged and margined crypto trading publishes in the Federal Register on October 13, 2026, as FR Doc 2026-20888, with comments due by December 14, 2026. It is a notice of intent, not yet a proposed rule. On October 12, Jaret Seiberg of TD Cowen’s Washington Research Group wrote, as The Block reports, “We believe the agency at best will get its proposal out in late Q1 2027 or early Q2 2027.” And: “It could then take until early 2028 to finalize the rule.”

Seiberg’s other warning: “Expediting this process will increase the risk that a judge blocks it on procedural grounds.” He added, “Even if the agency is careful, we still expect legal challenges could extend beyond 2028.” The Block’s headline sets that against the 2028 election. The next president takes office in January 2029.

What sits inside the notice matters more than the date. As we reported on October 10, the CFTC “preliminarily believes that possession and control of a crypto asset may require possession of the credentials (e.g., private key(s)) to the digital wallet address or account associated with such crypto asset.” A coin that lives only on an exchange’s internal book entry, in the notice’s reading, has not been delivered yet.

Washington is slowly writing down the definition of delivery that bitcoin holders already live by: the keys, or nothing. It may take until 2028 to make that a rule, and it may be in court after that. Your coins do not wait on the Federal Register. Withdraw them to a wallet you hold, and delivery is settled the moment the transaction confirms. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $81,534.