The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has kicked off a formal rulemaking process for digital assets, sending a pair of crypto rulemakings to the White House for review just days after the Clarity Act collapsed in the Senate.

According to a filing posted this week, the CFTC submitted a prerule titled "Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets" to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House office that vets federal rules before agencies release them.

As a prerule, the filing marks an early phase in the rulemaking process rather than a finished regulation, and OIRA review is a procedural step that precedes public release. Under the standard federal process, an agency typically follows a prerule with a proposed rule that opens a public comment period before any final text takes effect, meaning the clearest picture of the CFTC's intentions will only emerge once a proposal is published. The agency has not yet made the text public, so the specific provisions remain unclear. The paired titles indicate the rulemakings are intended to address both crypto asset transactions and the broader crypto asset markets.

The move signals that the CFTC intends to build a framework for crypto derivatives on its own regulatory authority rather than wait for Congress. For an industry that has sought clear federal rules, the timing matters: with the legislative track stalled, agency rulemaking is now the main avenue through which U.S. market-structure oversight is taking shape. That urgency stems from Tuesday's failed cloture vote on the Clarity Act, the market-structure bill that would have federal rules for digital assets and split oversight between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bill fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance.

Lead negotiator Sen. Cynthia Lummis called the legislation's chances all but dead this year, though others have since signaled they intend to push the bill forward regardless of the shortened legislative calendar, with midterm elections on the horizon.

Meanwhile, both the CFTC and the SEC have indicated they will not sit idle. Regulators have doubled down on crypto initiatives in the wake of the bill's failure. The SEC rolled out an "innovation exemption" this week that lets qualifying venues trade tokenized U.S. stocks natively on blockchain networks without registering as national exchanges.

The CFTC has been active on other fronts as well. The agency recently issued no-action relief allowing certain software providers, including crypto wallet apps, to offer users access to regulated derivatives without registering as introducing brokers.

Regulators have described their rulemaking push as a bridge toward eventual legislation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously pointed to agency rulemaking as the fallback if the Clarity Act stalls, leaving it the nearest thing to a regulatory timeline that U.S. crypto markets have for now. The next signals to watch are the release of the rulemaking text following OIRA review, the opening of any comment period, and whether Senate proponents can advance the Clarity Act on a calendar compressed by the approaching midterm elections.