On May 21, 2025, The Digital Chamber (TDC) submitted two comprehensive comment letters to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The filings respond to the Commission’s April 21 requests for comment on (1) the regulatory treatment of perpetual derivatives and (2) the feasibility of 24/7 trading and clearing in CFTC-regulated markets. Together, the letters urge a modern, principles-based approach that embraces innovation while preserving market integrity and customer protection.
1. Perpetual Derivatives: Enabling Modern Risk-Management Tools
Why it matters
Perpetual derivatives—or “perps”—have become the most liquid crypto-linked futures products globally. They allow investors to maintain continuous exposure to an underlying asset without the need to roll contracts every month, mirroring the 24/7 nature of the spot crypto markets.
Key points from TDC’s letter
| Recommendation | |
| Working definition | A perp is a margined contract with no fixed expiration, priced to spot via a funding-rate mechanism. |
| Benefits | Enhances price discovery, offers round-the-clock hedging, and lowers rollover costs for both retail and institutional traders. |
| Risk controls | Margin limits, funding-rate caps, circuit breakers, and real-time surveillance should be standard. |
| Disclosures | Additional language on funding-rate volatility, leverage, and liquidity dynamics is needed in customer risk documents. |
| Regulatory clarity | The CFTC should clarify whether perps are swaps, futures, or warrant a bespoke classification—especially for DeFi-native implementations. |
2. 24/7 Trading & Clearing: Aligning Regulation With Reality
Why it matters
Crypto spot markets operate nonstop. Extending that model to regulated derivatives would level the playing field for U.S. platforms and traders, unlock new liquidity, and reduce weekend “gap risk.”
Key points from TDC’s letter
| Recommendation | |
| Operational readiness | DCMs, SEFs, and DCOs should adopt active-active architecture, cloud-native deployments, and geo-redundant hosting to guarantee uptime. |
| Automated risk management | Real-time margin checks, auto-liquidation with customer alerts, and continuous collateral valuation are essential for safety. |
| Updated customer disclosures | Regulation 1.55 risk statements should spell out off-hours volatility, liquidity conditions, and banking-rail constraints. |
| Modernized rule set | CFTC should allow regulated stablecoins or tokenized fiat as acceptable collateral and revisit capital-reporting timelines that assume bank-hour settlement. |
| Market surveillance | AI/ML-driven tools that detect spoofing and wash trades must run continuously, with standardized data feeds across venues. |
These submissions reinforce The Digital Chamber’s core mission: championing a regulatory environment that allows the U.S. to remain the global leader in digital-asset innovation while safeguarding market participants. We look forward to collaborating with the CFTC and other stakeholders to turn these proposals into actionable, forward-looking policy.