Caroline Pham, acting chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, once again advanced President Donald Trump’s crypto agenda by eliminating old guidelines on “actual delivery” of crypto products that she said could hamper next steps.
“Eliminating outdated and overly complex guidelines that penalize the crypto industry and stifle innovation is exactly what the administration set out to do this year,” Pham said in a statement released Thursday.
The guidelines, established in 2020 during Trump’s first term, sought to define “actual delivery” of assets in a cryptocurrency transaction – a key concept under the Commodity Exchange Act. The law firm Steptoe had sought formal guidance from the CFTC to define the term as it applied to digital assets as early as 2016. But the President’s Task Force report on the administration’s digital assets agenda earlier this year recommended that the CFTC “consider expanding prior guidance on ‘real delivery’ of virtual assets.”
The CFTC had to remove the original document “in order to reevaluate this guidance in light of subsequent developments over the past five years in the means and methods deployed in the spot market for the purchase and sale of virtual currencies,” it said in the withdrawal notice.
Pham has led a rapid series of crypto policy moves at the agency over the past two weeks, even as Trump’s nominee to permanently replace her, Mike Selig, heads toward potential confirmation as soon as next week.
Read more: The CFTC Just Defined What Crypto “Real Delivery” Should Look Like
