TD Cowen's policy research team has told clients that crypto leverage rules under consideration at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission may not be finalized before the 2028 U.S. presidential election, according to the firm's Washington-based research note. The projection sets a potential four-year horizon from today for one of the most consequential pieces of the federal crypto market-structure agenda.

The assessment matters because the CFTC, not the SEC, is expected to take primary jurisdiction over spot crypto commodity trading under the market-structure legislation now working through Congress. Leverage rules sit at the center of that mandate: they determine how much borrowed capital U.S. retail and institutional traders can deploy on bitcoin, ether and other commodity-designated tokens, and on what margin terms.

What does the delay change for trading firms?

For practitioners, the practical question is simple: what does a 2028-or-later timeline change? The answer is planning certainty. Exchanges, prime brokers and offshore venues serving U.S. customers have been calibrating their product pipelines around the assumption that a federal leverage framework would arrive within the current legislative cycle. TD Cowen's read implies those firms should model an extended period in which leverage policy remains governed by state-level frameworks, exchange self-regulation and the CFTC's existing enforcement posture.

That carries operational weight. Compliance teams that anticipated a single federal standard will need to maintain parallel rulebooks across jurisdictions. Product teams weighing margin offerings face a longer window of ambiguity on permitted leverage ceilings. And firms building U.S. entities under the expectation of clear CFTC retail-access rules may need to extend conservative capital assumptions well beyond the next election cycle.

Why the timeline stretches

Rulemaking of this scale follows a fixed sequence once Congress passes enabling legislation: the CFTC must draft the rules, open a public comment period, review submissions and finalize. Each stage invites contested input from exchanges, broker-dealers and consumer-protection groups with sharply different views on appropriate leverage caps. TD Cowen's projection that finalization may slip past the 2028 election reflects that procedural reality, along with the political risk that a change in administration resets agency priorities.

A four-year gap between legislative intent and operational rules is not unusual in derivatives markets. Previous CFTC rulemakings under Dodd-Frank took years from statute to compliance dates. Crypto firms, however, have operated on shorter planning horizons, and a 2028 boundary forces a strategic choice between building to anticipated rules or waiting for final text.

The enforcement gap in the meantime

Until final rules arrive, the CFTC retains its existing tools: fraud enforcement, registration requirements for derivatives venues, and oversight of designated contract markets. Firms should expect the agency to keep policing leverage-adjacent conduct through case-by-case actions rather than codified standards.

The forward marker for the industry is the legislative calendar itself. If market-structure legislation clears Congress this session, the formal CFTC rulemaking clock starts, and TD Cowen's timeline becomes the benchmark against which every subsequent agency step is measured.