Former Acting Chair of the CFTC: No congressional legislation is needed, as the existing framework is sufficient to regulate the crypto market.

Former acting Chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and current Chief Legal Officer and Chief Administrative Officer at MoonPay, Caroline Pham, stated that the Commodity Exchange Act grants the CFTC broad regulatory authority, meaning the existing regulatory framework can cover emerging commodity sectors like crypto assets without waiting for congressional legislation. Pham believes the CFTC’s recently proposed rules will help strengthen protections for U.S. retail crypto traders. She noted that integrating relevant transactions into strictly regulated trading platforms is more conducive to investor protection than separate regulation by individual U.S. state laws. On stablecoins and tokenized deposits, Pham said tokenized deposits are more suited for wholesale financial markets. If all trades in a single trading day were settled via real-time atomic settlement on a blockchain, the required cash volume could hit $15 trillion—an amount existing funds cannot support. Banks currently offset counterparties’ receivables and payables through net settlement, so tokenized deposits will play a key role in wholesale markets; stablecoins, by contrast, are better for scenarios where counterparties lack trust and need to mitigate settlement risk. Additionally, Pham projects that over the next two years, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq will begin listing genuine tokenized stocks and generate substantial trading volume. She stressed that real tokenized stocks should retain shareholder rights such as voting power, distinguishing them from synthetic tokens not approved by the issuing company.