US tries to regulate crypto exchanges through its agencies: what could change for leverage and reserves?

Quick answer

The bill that would have organized the US crypto market, the CLARITY Act, stalled in the Senate on September 15, 2026, in a 49 to 50 vote when 60 were needed. Since then, the regulatory agencies have been writing rules with the authority they already have. The step that touches exchanges most came from the CFTC, the agency that oversees derivatives and commodities: on October 5 it released a public consultation, published in the Federal Register on October 13, on two regulations nicknamed Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM.

On leverage, the idea is that a US retail investor could only trade crypto on margin or with financing on a CFTC-registered exchange, with the credit extended by a registered broker or a bank. The text sets no leverage cap. On reserves, there is no requirement at all for now: the agency asks the market how it should treat proof of reserves and the separation of customer assets.

None of this is in force. The document is an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, with no rule text and no obligation for anyone, and comments are open until December 14, 2026. This article separates what the notice says from what is still a question, shows what the SEC is doing in parallel and explains what changes for people investing from Brazil. The Brazilian rules are covered in Brazil's Central Bank rules for exchanges and self-custody wallets.

Why the agencies and not Congress

The CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) would have split crypto market oversight by law between the SEC, which handles securities, and the CFTC. The House passed it in July 2025. In the Senate, the vote to end debate and bring the bill to the floor, on September 15, 2026, ended 49 to 50, eleven votes short. According to the law firm Baker Botts, the deadlock involved conflicts of interest of public officials, law-enforcement concerns about developers who do not hold customer assets, and bank resistance to yield on stablecoins. The same firm says the bill is unlikely to advance before the current Congress ends and would have to be reintroduced in January 2027. That part is a lawyers' assessment, not a settled fact.

Without a new law, the CFTC turned to a provision that has existed since 2010: section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act. It requires a retail commodity sale made with leverage, margin or financing to take place on a registered exchange, unless the buyer actually receives the asset within 28 days. Until now the agency applied that rule to crypto through enforcement cases. It now wants to turn it into regulation.

This route has a limit that CFTC Chairman Michael Selig himself acknowledges: the agency cannot force every exchange to register. Only Congress can. That is why the proposed regime is optional for platforms that offer no leverage, which Selig compared to choosing between a federal and a state bank charter. An agency rule can also be revised by a later administration or challenged in court more easily than a statute.

What the CFTC put out for comment

The document runs about 30 pages in the Federal Register and uses three acronyms worth learning:

• CTX: a retail crypto transaction offered with leverage, margin or financing. Regulation CTX would define which transactions fall into that category.
• CAM (crypto asset market): a new subcategory of CFTC-registered exchange, built to list crypto assets and these transactions. Regulation CAM would set its requirements.
• FCM (futures commission merchant): the registered broker that takes orders and holds customer funds. Every transaction on a CAM would go through an FCM, which could belong to the same group as the exchange.

Two details widen the reach. The first is the concept of a covered offer: in the reading of the law firm Fenwick, if an exchange's terms of service offer margin or financing for an account, every transaction covered by those terms falls under the rule, including fully paid ones. The second is the definition of actual delivery. The agency's preliminary view is that sending the asset within 28 days to a wallet whose keys the customer controls satisfies the exception, and that a balance recorded only on the exchange's internal ledger does not. The earlier guidance on this, from 2020, was withdrawn effective December 10, 2025.

Platforms that only sell spot crypto, without offering credit, would stay under state money transmitter licenses. Even then the CFTC keeps its authority to punish fraud and manipulation. The notice cites letters from Coinbase and Kraken, which asked the agency to consider how crypto markets differ from futures markets.

Leverage: what could change

Leverage means trading a larger amount than the money deposited, with the difference lent by the platform. An example with round numbers: with $1,000 of margin and 5x leverage, the position is $5,000. A 20% price drop consumes the entire $1,000, and the position is closed by force before that point. This is an arithmetic example, unrelated to any platform.

The CFTC notice would change who can lend and how the loan is described:

• Who lends: only so-called eligible leverage providers, meaning the FCM or a bank sponsored by it. The bank would have to state in writing that it complies with the rules that apply to FCMs in this activity.
• Where it is written: each leverage arrangement would have to appear in the exchange's rulebook, with margin requirements, accepted collateral, fees, financing charges, liquidation procedures and customer disclosures.
• Who sets the margin: this is open. The agency describes two paths: keep the futures model, where the clearing house sets initial and maintenance margin, or set the requirements itself.
• Which collateral counts: the agency asks whether some crypto assets should be barred as collateral and whether it should require minimum capitalization and daily volume.
• Reuse of customer assets: the notice asks whether a broker could reuse the crypto posted as collateral (known as rehypothecation) and how to limit it.

The point traders care about most is undecided: there is no leverage cap in the text. There is a hint about how one could appear. The CFTC asks whether it should delegate margin setting to the NFA, the industry's self-regulatory body, as it already does in retail foreign exchange. In that market, the federal rule (17 CFR 5.9) requires a minimum deposit of 2% of the transaction value for major currency pairs and 5% for the rest, which works out to at most 50x and 20x. Those are forex numbers, quoted here only as a reference. Nobody has proposed applying them to crypto.

The notice also contemplates a registration exemption for platforms with very small volume in these transactions. The threshold has not been set.

Reserves: what could change

Here the text is shorter and more cautious. In the section titled Proof of Reserves, the CFTC notes that exchanges typically keep customer property in omnibus accounts, where everyone's assets sit together. It also notes that some firms hire an outside auditor to attest that the assets in reserve cover everything owed to customers, a practice known as proof of reserves. It then asks for comment on the risks of this custody model and on which proof-of-reserves practices it should consider, including checks done on the blockchain itself.

It is a question, with no frequency, format or auditor defined. Headlines about a "proof of reserves requirement" are ahead of the document.

The part with the most practical consequence is segregation. Under US law, an FCM must account for and keep customer funds separate. The CFTC asks what adjustments crypto would need and raises a relevant doubt: if fully paid positions are not held in segregated accounts, how would they be treated if the broker went bankrupt? Fenwick notes that the agency floats an alternative based on state commercial law, and Baker Botts sums up that the level of insolvency protection remains uncertain.

Selig tied the initiative to FTX, the exchange that collapsed in 2022. In the official release he said the agency wants to "prevent, rather than only prosecute after the fact," fraudulent schemes like that one.

Summary table: dates, numbers and the status of each item

All items were checked on October 13, 2026 and apply to the United States. Comment periods can be extended.

What the SEC is doing in parallel

The SEC is also moving by rule, but on other fronts. None of the three measures below sets leverage or reserves for exchanges.

• Regulation Crypto Assets (August 18, 2026): deals with token offerings. It proposes two registration exemptions, one for raises of up to $5 million over four years and another of up to $75 million every 12 months, plus a test for a token to stop being treated as an investment contract. Comments run until October 20, 2026. Trading and custody were left to other rules.
• Custody (October 1, 2026): applies to registered investment advisers and funds, not to ordinary investors. It lets state trust companies act as qualified custodians for crypto, with client assets kept separate from the company's own. The SEC explored and rejected a rule that would let these managers keep assets on trading platforms that are not permitted custodians, but asks whether it should allow that under conditions such as a 24-hour limit. The comment period is 60 days after official publication.
• Temporary exemption for tokenized stocks: allows, under conditions, trading of tokenized stocks on specific venues, valid through September 17, 2031, according to Baker Botts.

In practice, the agency writing about leverage in the spot market today is the CFTC. The SEC is dealing with issuers and with those who manage other people's money.

What changes for people investing from Brazil

Directly, nothing. The notice deals with offers to retail customers in the United States, and companies serving Brazilians are supervised by Brazil's Central Bank. There, Resolution BCB 589/2026 already included proof of reserves among the information a virtual asset service provider sends to the regulator, as shown in the guide to the Central Bank rules.

Indirect effects are hypotheses. Global exchanges that want to offer margin to Americans would have to build or hire the exchange, broker and clearing structure, and some of those controls may be adopted in other countries. It is also possible that nothing changes outside the US. The document says nothing about it, and the leverage product available to a Brazilian still depends on each platform's rules and on the Central Bank.

What the documents show and what they do not allow us to conclude

They show that the CFTC intends to regulate leveraged retail crypto trading by rule, that credit would be limited to registered brokers and banks, that the agency treats an exchange balance and an asset in a self-custody wallet differently, and that segregation of customer assets is a problem it admits it has not solved.

They do not allow us to conclude what the leverage limit will be, whether proof of reserves will be mandatory, when a final rule will come out, or how many exchanges will opt in. An advance notice still has to become a formal proposal, go through another comment round and be voted on by the commission. The text gives no timeline. The documents also cannot tell us whether a future act of Congress would keep this design.

Risks and precautions

• Regulatory risk: what is out for comment may change a lot before a final rule, be dropped or be replaced by a law. Do not treat any point of the notice as a rule in force.
• Leverage risk: no rule removes liquidation risk. In an asset that moves 10% in a day, high leverage can wipe out the margin in hours.
• Custody and counterparty risk: while assets sit on the exchange, you depend on its solvency. Proof of reserves shows assets and liabilities on one date, does not guarantee the next day and does not replace segregation.
• Jurisdiction risk: protection designed for US customers does not extend to an account held with the same brand's entity in another country.
• Information risk: social media summaries already present the consultation as "new rules in force". Check the date, the type of document and the comment deadline.
• Liquidity risk: if platforms stop offering margin to certain customers to avoid registering, open positions may have to be closed on short notice.

Checklist for following this topic

• Check whether the news is about an advance notice, a formal proposal or a final rule. They are three different stages.
• Note the deadline: comments until December 14, 2026 in the CFTC's case.
• Before using margin, read the maintenance margin and the liquidation procedure in the platform's terms.
• Find out which legal entity of the exchange serves you and which regulator supervises it.
• Look for the platform's proof of reserves and see whether it includes liabilities and who audited it.
• If you do not plan to trade in the short term, consider keeping assets in your own wallet, with proper backups.
• Decide how much you accept losing before opening any leveraged position.

Frequently asked questions

Are the new US rules for exchanges already in force?

No. The CFTC document is an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, published on October 13, 2026, with comments open until December 14, 2026. It creates no obligation for any company.

Will the CFTC cap crypto leverage?

The text has no cap. The agency asks whether margin should be set by the clearing house, by the agency itself or by a self-regulatory body, as happens in retail forex.

Will US exchanges be required to publish proof of reserves?

Not for now. The CFTC describes the practice and asks for comment on which models it should consider. No requirement, frequency or format has been defined.

What are Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM?

They are the two regulations under study. CTX would define which retail crypto transactions made with leverage, margin or financing fall under the CFTC. CAM would create a category of registered exchange to list those transactions.

Does this affect people using an exchange in Brazil?

Not directly. The consultation deals with retail customers in the United States. In Brazil, the rules come from the Central Bank. Indirect effects on global platforms are possible, but they are not in the document.

Was the CLARITY Act rejected for good?

The bill was not voted on its merits. On September 15, 2026, the vote to end debate had 49 in favor and 50 against, below the 60 needed. Lawyers following the issue say it is unlikely to advance before 2027.

Informational and educational content. It is not investment advice, an offer or a solicitation to buy or sell assets.

Sources: Federal Register — Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets, advance notice of proposed rulemaking (91 FR 64811, Oct 13, 2026); CFTC — release 9307-26 (Oct 5, 2026); Baker Botts — CFTC launches crypto market structure rulemaking as SEC advances its own digital asset framework (Oct 2026); Fenwick — analysis of Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM (Oct 2026); Sheppard Mullin, in the National Law Review — federal framework for leveraged retail crypto trading (Oct 8, 2026); White & Case — SEC proposes Regulation Crypto Assets; King & Spalding — SEC crypto custody proposal (Oct 12, 2026); Croke Fairchild — crypto custody rules for advisers and funds (Oct 2, 2026); Cornell Law School — 17 CFR 5.9, minimum deposit in retail forex. Checked on Oct 13, 2026.