Decentralized finance (DeFi) will be the first topic discussed at the opening meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee on March 22, further cementing the cryptocurrency sector as a priority for the U.S. derivatives regulator.

“A discussion about DeFi, including cyber vulnerabilities, indicators of ‘decentralization,’ digital identity and unhosted wallets, will contribute to ongoing policy discussions in Washington, D.C., and beyond the Beltway,” said Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, the CFTC sponsor for the new incarnation of this advisory group, in a statement.

The CFTC has been devoting increasing attention to the crypto sector, especially as the agency seeks novel powers to oversee the non-securities crypto spot market.

Another of the CFTC’s advisory committees, the Global Markets Advisory Committee overseen by Commissioner Caroline Pham, met on Feb. 13 to discuss digital assets issues during its initial meeting. She argued that crypto is “truly borderless,” and policymakers “need to understand what is happening at the international level.”

Regulations CFTC DeFi US Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.