The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is facilitating a market structure where U.S. Treasury bonds and cryptocurrencies can ultimately coexist side by side.
On December 12, the CFTC approved an expansion of cross-margining for U.S. Treasury bonds.
This is how the CFTC's new order affects crypto
This change allows certain customers, not just clearing members, to offset margin requirements between Treasury bond futures cleared at CME Group. CME Group is one of the largest platforms for crypto derivatives in the U.S.
This also applies to cash Treasury securities cleared at the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation’s Fixed Income Clearing Corporation.
“Expanding cross-margining to customers will provide capital savings that can increase liquidity and robustness in U.S. Treasury securities, the world's most important market,” said Caroline Pham, acting head of the CFTC, according to.
Cross-margining allows companies to reduce total collateral requirements by netting correlated positions in a portfolio. The extension of this arrangement from broker balances to end customers in the Treasury securities market represents a significant structural shift.
Market participants view this as a practical test of risk models. These frameworks may ultimately support portfolios that include Treasury securities, tokenized funds, and crypto assets within a single clearing system.
For crypto derivatives traded on the CME, the measures may have significant implications for the market.
If Treasury securities and bond futures can be cross-margined on a large scale, similar frameworks may eventually support more complex portfolios. These portfolios may include tokenized Treasury securities and spot Bitcoin as collateral in CME Bitcoin and ETH futures, all subject to unified margin and risk controls.
At the same time, the timing of this order comes amid broader cryptocurrency regulatory efforts involving both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This also reflects the SEC's parallel work on market structure and clearing reform, where regulators are assessing how tokenized securities and digital assets can fit into established settlement and custody systems.
It is worth noting that the commission led by Pham recently launched a pilot program for digital securities. The initiative allows the use of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC as margin in CFTC-regulated derivatives markets.
These measures reflect a regulatory focus on capital utilization and risk management across asset classes that increasingly blur the lines between traditional and digital markets.
