Better Markets is pushing back on the idea of the CFTC becoming the primary regulator for retail crypto. The group said this week that the agency is the wrong fit for that job and warned that giving it a broader mandate could leave retail investors with thinner protections, not stronger ones.
Why the CFTC is the wrong fit
Better Markets' argument rests on a simple point: the CFTC was built for derivatives markets, not for policing the kind of retail-facing crypto products that everyday users actually touch. Its statutory remit centers on futures, swaps, and the commodity markets. Retail crypto — spot trading, custody, token listings — doesn't map cleanly onto any of that.
Handing the agency a bigger retail portfolio without rewriting its mandate, the group argues, would stretch an already thin remit. It's not a knock on the CFTC's staff. It's a structural problem. The tools the agency has were shaped for a different market and a different set of risks.
What 'clear mandates' actually means
The group's second point is less about who regulates and more about how. Better Markets emphasized that crypto oversight needs clear regulatory mandates — not overlapping ones, not ambiguous ones, and not ones that get stretched to cover products the agency wasn't designed to handle.
That's the part that tends to get lost in the agency-jurisdiction fight. When mandates are murky, the gaps get filled by enforcement actions rather than rules. Firms don't know what's allowed until someone gets sued. Investors don't know what protections apply until something breaks. Better Markets is essentially arguing that clarity is the protection, and piling retail crypto onto the CFTC doesn't deliver it.
The bigger jurisdictional question
Better Markets' statement lands in the middle of a long-running tug-of-war over which US agency should own crypto oversight. The SEC and CFTC have spent years circling the question, with different chairs, different Congresses, and different courts weighing in at different times. The practical result for the industry has been a patchwork — some tokens treated one way, some another, and plenty of firms unsure which rulebook applies to them.
Adding retail crypto to the CFTC's plate would expand that patchwork rather than resolve it. That's the subtext of Better Markets' warning. A bigger role for the agency sounds like a simpler answer. In practice, it just moves the ambiguity.
What the group wants instead
Better Markets didn't offer a competing agency pick. It didn't name a preferred regulator, and it didn't float a specific legislative fix. What it did was set a condition: whatever the arrangement ends up being, the mandates have to be written clearly enough that investors know what they're getting and agencies know what they're enforcing.
That's a harder ask than it sounds. Clear mandates mean Congress has to decide what crypto is — a security, a commodity, something else — and then assign it. Until that happens, the CFTC-versus-SEC question stays open, and groups like Better Markets will keep arguing that the wrong agency with the wrong tools is worse than a slow answer.
The next move isn't in Better Markets' hands. It's with lawmakers and the agencies themselves, and neither has shown much appetite this year for the kind of clean jurisdictional line the group is asking for. That's the gap worth watching.
