In the past week, the cadence of U.S. federal regulation aligned unusually: earlier this week, the SEC submitted a proposal to amend the rules surrounding brokerage firms conducting digital asset business to the Office of Management and Budget for review, aiming to clearly incorporate crypto assets into the existing securities regulatory framework by adjusting financial responsibility, record-keeping, and reporting requirements; almost simultaneously, the CFTC's clearing and risk department issued a "no-action letter," allowing derivatives clearing organizations to treat regulated trust companies as clearing banks for daily settlement with clearing members, provided certain conditions are met. The CFTC also submitted a proposal aimed at strengthening regulatory oversight or requirements for prediction markets to the same office within the same week, incorporating derivatives with event contracts and prediction products into the same regulatory pathway. Brokerage firms on the securities side and clearing and prediction markets on the derivatives side were simultaneously brought to the table in this round of actions, signaling that U.S. crypto assets are being incorporated into the existing securities and derivatives regulatory systems, and the intention of multiple agencies to redraw boundaries is clearly evident. However, as of November 6, 2026, the aforementioned SEC proposal, CFTC no-action letter, and prediction market regulatory proposal remain in review or guidance stages and have not yet transformed into formally effective rules; the actual impact on market participants and on-chain structures will depend on the forthcoming conclusions and specific provisions from the review process.

White House Involvement in Brokerage Crypto Business Regulations

Specifically related to brokerage firms, the SEC has chosen to tackle the issue from the most traditional angle of "financial responsibility, record-keeping, and reporting obligations." According to spokesperson comments, the proposal under consideration by the Commission is not about creating a brand new set of crypto-specific regulations, but rather revising the existing brokerage framework to clarify how these existing provisions apply to crypto assets—what digital assets count towards capital adequacy tests, how on-chain assets are accounted in financial statements, and whether extra disclosures are needed for transactions, custody, and reconciliation records with clients will all be included in a unified compliance context. In other words, this is an attempt to fit crypto assets into familiar regulatory boxes rather than overturning the boxes entirely.

However, the SEC has not made decisions behind closed doors; instead, it sent the proposal to the White House's Office of Management and Budget for an initial "cost-benefit" and policy consistency assessment. The proposal submitted to the OMB earlier this week means that this rule will be evaluated as a significant regulatory measure: what impact it will have on brokerage firms' operational costs, whether it will conflict with existing financial policies, and the review results may demand that the SEC amend provisions rather than following a fast-track approval process. This is indeed a signal for traditional brokerages and compliance service providers to study the landscape of crypto brokerage business seriously, but the details, scope, and formal review timeline of the current proposal have not been made public, so any substantive business planning can only be built on the premise of "direction set, path to be clarified."

Securities Regulation Extension: Brokerage Books Face Crypto Assets

Once the financial responsibility, record-keeping, and reporting rules for brokerage firms are clarified to apply to digital assets, the handling of "tokens" on brokerage books will no longer be a matter of business practice but will rise to the level of regulatory lines. According to an SEC spokesperson, this proposal directly addresses how brokerages reflect digital asset exposure on their balance sheets, how to define the boundaries between client and proprietary positions, and how to disclose relevant risks in daily reconciliations and periodic reports. In traditional securities business, client asset segregation, net capital constraints, and complete transaction record keeping constitute the compliance foundation; if these obligations are applied to digital asset business, the technical systems for brokers to custody crypto assets, risk control models, and cooperation models with third-party custodians must be "translated" according to securities regulatory standards, rather than remaining at the level of industry self-regulation or platform agreements.

More importantly, the narrative signal conveyed by the regulatory pathway itself is noteworthy: existing information indicates that the SEC has chosen to address the applicability of digital assets by revising existing brokerage rules, rather than issuing a separate set of crypto-specific regulations, which suggests that the regulatory agency prefers to embed digital assets within the securities regulatory framework rather than creating a parallel system for them. In the U.S., crypto assets have long been caught in jurisdictional disputes between the SEC and CFTC, the former focusing on securities products and brokerages, while the latter oversees derivatives and clearing infrastructures. Now, the SEC is enhancing the old rules; whether the final text will differentiate between different types of digital assets and how to clearly delineate authority with the CFTC at the derivatives level remain key variables that have yet to disclose but must be tracked continuously. These variables will directly determine the boundaries and compliance burdens of brokerage firms in the digital asset business.

Trust Settlement for Clearing Houses: Easing Derivatives Infrastructure

In the same week that the SEC is attempting to redefine the boundaries of brokerages, the CFTC's clearing and risk department has chosen to issue a no-action letter, leaving another experimental pathway for derivatives infrastructure. This letter clarifies that, under specific conditions, derivatives clearing organizations (DCOs) can utilize trust companies to conduct daily settlements with clearing members, provided the trust companies are treated as clearing banks under CFTC applicable requirements. For DCOs responsible for centrally clearing various contracts, including those related to digital assets, this means they do not have to wait for formal rule modifications and can attempt to introduce different types of entities into the settlement chain under regulatory tacit approval.

The no-action letter itself is merely a regulatory relief tool, not a rewrite of rules; it has neither provided a clear expiration date in public materials nor disclosed more detailed applicable provisions, but the signal conveyed is clear: the CFTC is willing to let clearinghouses first explore the operational mode of "trust company settlement" within the framework of technical determinations of the risk department, and then decide whether to advance adjustments at the institutional level based on operational results. For derivatives contracts involving digital assets, this trust company pathway has the potential to build a bridging mechanism between traditional clearing systems and new technological infrastructures, but whether it can be widely adopted and whether it will in turn force formal rule amendments remain to be assessed based on future regulatory and market feedback in the medium to long term.

Tightening Prediction Markets: Event Contracts Face Stricter Regulation

While the trust company settlement pathway is still in the experimental phase, the CFTC this week has also focused on another long-unresolved gray area—prediction markets. The regulatory agency has submitted a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget intended to strengthen regulatory or rule requirements, but currently, the outside world can only confirm that the proposal has entered the review process, with specifics of the regulatory provisions, applicable subjects, and execution methods yet to be disclosed. Compared to traditional commodity futures and financial derivatives, this step is equivalent to extending regulatory boundaries from price-based contracts to contractual products designed around "events themselves," such as electoral outcomes, macro indicators, or policy directions; following previous enforcement actions against some event contracts, the regulatory body is attempting to respond to industry questions and explorations about compliance boundaries with more systematic rules.

This thread naturally triggers nerves in the on-chain world. The "prediction markets" in the eyes of U.S. regulators correspond on-chain to oracle protocols built around real-world events and betting and settlement products existing in smart contract form; their basic logic is highly similar to over-the-counter event contracts, but the current proposal still under review does not directly name on-chain protocols or specific asset classes, with its impact resembling that of a nascent barometer rather than an already established hard constraint. The details that will truly determine the future form of event contracts will be the specific terms publicly disclosed later: how they will define the scope of tradable events, how to set participation thresholds and position limits, and whether they will require operators to align with more detailed reporting and risk control mechanisms—these details will ultimately delineate the compliance space between on-chain and off-chain prediction products and in turn shape the design boundaries and innovation directions for a new generation of event contracts.

Multi-Channel Regulation Advances: Crypto Moves Toward a Compliant Financial Testing Ground

Returning to this week's trifecta: the SEC submitted the digital asset business rule amendment proposal for brokerage firms to the Office of Management and Budget for review, the CFTC’s clearing and risk department issued a no-action letter, reserving operational space for derivatives clearing organizations to introduce trust companies for daily settlement under specific conditions, followed by the submission of a proposal to strengthen regulatory oversight of prediction markets to the same review window. The dual core of U.S. crypto regulation—the SEC, which handles securities and brokerages, and the CFTC, which oversees derivatives, clearing infrastructure, and prediction markets—are simultaneously converging around the same compliance framework on different fronts. As of November 6, 2026, these actions remain at the level of review and regulatory leniency: the SEC proposal is still with the OMB, the CFTC no-action letter is essentially a conditional "non-enforcement" commitment, and the regulatory proposal for prediction markets has not yet resulted in final rules. They will not rewrite market technical paths in the short term, but they subtly lay out a medium- to long-term trajectory on key nodes such as financial responsibility, record-keeping, reporting obligations, the identification of clearing parties, and the boundaries of event contracts. The variables worth closely monitoring have become quite clear: the review conclusions and rhythm of the OMB on SEC and CFTC proposals, the details of the final broker rule text published by the SEC, and the execution feedback given by the CFTC on DCO settlement practices and the prediction market pilot, as well as whether those will trigger further amendments. These outcomes will collectively determine whether crypto assets are embedded within a specific chapter of the existing financial regulatory system or will be forced to reconstruct their product and market forms within a narrower compliance corridor.

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