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CFTC’s subcommittee report on decentralized finance highlights its findings and recommendations
On January 8, the CFTC issued a report on decentralized finance ahead of the CFTC’s event on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and decentralized finance. Authored by the CFTC’s Subcommittee on Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology, which is a group of fintech experts selected by the CFTC, the report urged government and industries to work together and advance the developments of decentralized finance in a responsible and compliant way.
The report lists many key findings and recommendations for policymakers to implement. For example, the report highlights how policymakers should keep in mind customer and investor protections, promotion of market integrity and financial stability, and efforts to combat illicit finance when creating regulations, among others. Recommendations for policymakers include increasing their technical understanding of this space, surveying the existing regulatory “perimeter,” identifying and cataloging risks, identifying the range of regulatory strategies, and applying regulatory framework on digital identity, KYC and AML regimes, and calibration on privacy in decentralized finance.
For further learning on decentralized finance, IOSCO released a publication on its nine recommendations, which was previously covered by InfoBytes here.
IOSCO publishes nine recommendations on decentralized finance
On December 19, 2023, the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published a report on decentralized finance to address market integrity and investor protection. The report includes nine policy recommendations for decentralized financial regulators to follow. Decentralized finance structures include financial products and arrangements that use a distributed ledger or blockchain technology. IOSCO’s policy recommendations on decentralized finance complement a similar report on crypto and digital asset markets, as written about on InfoBytes, here. The policy recommendations are as follows: (i) regulators should analyze decentralized finance products, services, and activities in its jurisdiction; (ii) regulators should identify the persons or entities that could be subject to its regulatory framework; (iii) regulators should use frameworks to regulate and address risks arising from decentralized finance consistent with IOSCO standards; (iv) regulators should require responsible persons to address conflicts of interest; (v) regulators should require responsible persons to address material risks, including operational and technological ones; (vi) regulators should require responsible persons to disclose information clearly to users and investors; (vii) regulators should apply comprehensive powers to decentralized financial services to detect and enforce violations under law; (viii) regulators should cooperate and share information with other regulators and authorities; and (ix) regulators should seek to understand how decentralized finance products are linked to the crypto-asset market as well as traditional finance markets. The final section of the report summarized the feedback garnered from 45 stakeholders on eight categories.