The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has recommended the expansion of the use of non-cash collateral through the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) by its Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC).
CFTC said this recommendation provides a legal and regulatory framework for how market participants can apply their existing policies, procedures, practices, and processes to support use of DLT for non-cash collateral in a manner consistent with margin requirements.
Caroline D. Pham, CFTC commissioner said: “All over the world, there have been successful and proven commercial use cases for tokenization of assets, such as digital government bond issuances in Europe and Asia, over $1.5 trillion notional volume in institutional repo and payments transactions on enterprise blockchain platforms, and more efficient collateral and treasury management.
“We can finally begin to make progress on US regulatory clarity for digital assets with today’s GMAC recommendation on tokenised non-cash collateral. This marks a significant first step toward realising these opportunities for our derivatives markets — with exactly the same guardrails and protections in place. Embracing new technology does not mean compromising on market integrity.”