CFTC official Mel Gunewardena stated that the U.S. is leading the transformation of the crypto market through the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts, and the CFTC has approved the first on-chain perpetual futures contract.

Mel Gunewardena, Director of International Affairs at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), stated in a speech at George Washington University that the global derivatives market has exceeded $1.2 quadrillion, with the CFTC regulating approximately $600 trillion of that. He emphasized that during Donald Trump's presidency, the U.S. is establishing a federal framework for payment stablecoins through the GENIUS Act and advancing a broader crypto asset market framework via the CLARITY Act. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig has translated this leadership into the global derivatives market by approving the first "true" on-chain perpetual futures contract and developing rules for prediction markets. Gunewardena believes the market is moving towards a continuous, programmable, composable, and autonomous phase, where tokenization of assets, smart contracts, and AI trading systems will reshape the global financial system, yet a significant gap exists in the international regulatory agenda to address this structural transformation.