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CEO Notes

Re-Engineering of US Derivatives Markets

[Our daily CEO briefing for PRO readers; PDF at the bottom]

MB
SB
Marc Baumann, Sangam Bharti
December 10, 2025 6 min read Paid
Re-Engineering of US Derivatives Markets

The Federal Reserve just lost control of its most important tool: the collateral hierarchy.

For seventy years, the Fed’s power flowed from a single choke point - deciding what counts as “money good“ collateral. Treasury bonds. Agency MBS. Investment-grade corporates. But on December 8, 2025, CFTC changed that. It has approved Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC as collateral in the U.S. derivative market, without touching the traditional banking system at all. [ANNOUNCEMENT]

Let’s unpack.

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Today’s Market Signals

  • Strategy buys $963m BTC, BitMine buys 138k ETH. Link

  • SEC ends Biden-era investigation into Ondo Finance. Link

  • HashKey launches Hong Kong IPO seeking up to $214.7M. Link

  • Tether gains Abu Dhabi’s approval to expand USDT. Link

What happened

CFTC has permitted Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC (high-quality liquid assets) to serve as margin collateral for Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) under a pilot program. The regulator has effectively removed the old rule that forced digital asset holders to sell their tokens for cash before they could hedge.

Bitnomial is the first exchange to receive approval for this model. [RELEASE]

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