The US crypto rulebook is being rewritten outside Congress. The perpetual market has priced that at zero.
What happened
A new entry appeared in the White House OIRA pending-review register: RIN 3038-AF80, “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets”, submitted by the CFTC, received 17 September 2026, stage listed as Prerule. It is not flagged economically significant, and it falls under Dodd-Frank.
That “Prerule” label is the important part. The CFTC has not filed a formal proposal for public comment. The register page carries no public text, no scope, no comment period and no compliance obligation. It has to clear review, then be approved by the Commission, then go through notice-and-comment before any of it takes effect.
The context is the Senate procedural vote that failed to advance (the post at the time covered the $571m of longs that got cleared out). Per CNBC on 22 September, two days after that vote the SEC and CFTC began assembling as much of the rulebook as their existing authority allows; the CFTC pointed CNBC to Chair Michael Selig’s 16 September statement, and an SEC spokesperson said the agency will consider a proposal to modernise custody rules for investment adviser and fund assets, including crypto assets. Separately, a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general wrote to the Senate Banking Committee arguing the bill displaces state securities regulation.
What the funding prints say
Take the window from 16 September 00:00 to 23 September 00:00 (UTC) — from the day of the Senate vote through to today, after the rulemaking went in:
- BTCUSDT: 22 settlements, cumulative 0.151008%, mean 0.006864% per period, high 0.010000% (the baseline, touched six times), low 0.001021%, and zero negative periods
- ETHUSDT: 22 settlements, cumulative 0.129776%, mean 0.005899%, only 2 negative periods, both on 16 September, low −0.004012%
Market-wide, the negative share fell day by day: 8.89% on 20 September, 8.60% on the 21st, 7.15% on the 22nd, and 3.58% on the first settlement of the 23rd across 447 symbols.
Why funding does not react to this kind of news
A funding rate prices one narrow thing: whether the perpetual is trading at a premium or a discount to spot right now. It does not price “the rules might change at some future date” — that is the job of the spot price and options volatility.
And this particular item genuinely has no content yet. Prerule means there is not even draft language. A register entry with no text has no effect on arbitrage execution. What does change funding conventions is exchange rule changes — a settlement interval moving, or a contract being delisted — because those come with effective dates and defined scope.
What it means for a two-leg book
Nothing, for now. Two specific things are worth watching: if custody rules actually change, that affects where assets can sit; if exchange-level compliance requirements change, that affects whether both legs can be opened in the same place. Neither has happened.
We are not going to write what the rules will eventually say. There are several procedural steps between prerule and effect, and any of them can change the content.
What to watch
The status of RIN 3038-AF80 at OIRA, and whether the CFTC subsequently releases documents describing scope. Until there is text, all this story provides is a register number.
Sources
Regulatory: the reginfo.gov EO 12866 pending-review entry (RIN 3038-AF80, received 2026-09-17, stage Prerule), CNBC (2026-09-22), cryptotimes.io (2026-09-18). Funding rates from the per-settlement records in our FundingRateTicks table, window 2026-09-16 00:00 to 2026-09-23 00:00 UTC.