SEC and CFTC want help building new crypto reporting regime for hedge funds

Regulators want help assembling a regime for private funds to report their crypto exposure. 

On September 1, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission put out a request for comment on proposed changes to Form PF.

The SEC and CFTC are the key regulators for U.S. financial markets. Form PF is a confidential filing that hedge funds make to the SEC to report their exposure to certain assets. It originated after the 2008 financial crash, which was largely a product of opaque private funds holding junk assets — most famously, subprime mortgages.

The current Form PF features no mention of digital assets at all. The two regulators agreed to a joint proposal to add digital asset reporting early in August. "The proposal would add a new sub-asset class for digital assets and define the term 'digital asset,'" the request for comment explains.

The questions that appear in the request for comment are, consequently, pretty foundational: Should reporting entities have to identify the specifics of their holdings by name or by type of digital asset, should there be different standards for fiat-redeemable stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, and should tokens that represent equity be another class. 

The comment period ends October 11.