Caroline D. Pham, former acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), says the agency's authority extends to nearly every commodity in the United States — including digital assets — and that no new law from Congress is required.

That assertion matters for how US crypto rules get written: if her reading of the statute holds, the ground rules for retail digital asset trading can be set by the agency itself, without waiting for Congress to pass new legislation.

In an interview on October 12, 2026, Pham said the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC jurisdiction over virtually every commodity. She also backed the agency's recent crypto proposals, calling them "absolutely the kind of protection" that US retail crypto traders need. The regulator is currently writing rules for how everyday Americans trade crypto, including trades made with borrowed money.

The onion exception

Pham's argument rests on the Commodity Exchange Act, or CEA, the CFTC's founding rulebook. Her reading of the statute is broad. In her view, it covers almost all commodities, with onions and movie box office receipts carved out — the exclusions Congress wrote directly into the law. If something is not on that very short exclusion list, the CFTC can oversee it.

What the CFTC has actually proposed

The agency issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking around October 5, 2026, focused on retail commodity transactions in crypto assets. An advanced notice is an early step in the rulemaking process: the agency floats ideas and asks the public for feedback before drafting a formal rule. Nothing binding exists yet, and any formal rule would still need to be drafted and finalized after the comment period. For anyone tracking where this lands, the visible next steps are the comment window and the agency's decision on whether to advance a formal proposed rule.

Current CFTC Chairman Michael Selig is pushing frameworks for retail digital asset transactions, including margined and leveraged trading. Pham pointed to these proposals as the right kind of guardrails for retail traders.

In December 2025, the CFTC launched a digital assets pilot program that used BTC, ETH, and USDC as tokenized collateral in derivatives markets. The pilot and the current proposals share a common thread: both test how digital assets slot into existing US derivatives and commodities frameworks — first as collateral, then as the subject of retail transaction rules.

Pham's tenure and the enforcement question

Pham joined the CFTC as a commissioner in April 2022. She served as acting chairman from January 20, 2025, until she left the agency on December 22, 2025. The December 2025 pilot program launched in the final stretch of her time as acting chairman, while the October 2026 proposals came after her departure, under Selig.

Her tenure also coincided with a sharp change in how the agency polices markets. CFTC enforcement actions fell nearly 80% in 2025 compared with the average of the prior decade. That drop came alongside a 21% staffing reduction by year-end, and the agency shifted strategy, moving away from certain crypto cases.