The Last Look…
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: February 17, 2026
Bitcoin, collateral and the dollar.
As bitcoin’s crash hogs the headlines it has gone relatively unnoticed that something important happened: the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced it would not recommend enforcement action against FCMs that accept newly qualified asset classes – bitcoin and ether to you and me – as collateral.
This comes at a time when it’s not so much a case of FOMO but a headless rush into crypto, that seems to be the order of the day, certainly when it comes to bans and “TradFi’ institutions. This is a hugely significant move that’s likely to further tighten the links between markets like FX and digital assets, forcing new correlations to emerge and changing dynamics that many in the market rely on. (Hello, dollar!)
This also reaches across the whole gamut of the buyside clients. In its announcement the CFTC added that enhanced protocols are available – bitcoin and ether as collateral might not sound like everyone’s cup of tea, but what they ultimately mean is that tokenised currencies are at the forefront of collateral management; for better or worse.
The CFTC added, to be fair, that the initiative is temporary and noted that stablecoins will also become available as collateral for derivatives trading. Still, the whole experiment is not without risks as we will no doubt find out.
Meanwhile, the CFTC also assembled its so-called Innovation Advisory Council to discuss “developing clear rules of the road for the Golden Age of American Financial Markets”. The list reads like a who’s who of Big Crypto: from Uniswap to Coinbase as well as a smattering of big traditional names like the CME. Bitcoin as collateral would unlock trillions of dollars’ worth of money and without the need of bothering with tokenising other assets like repo. Finally, by becoming collateral, Bitcoin could pick up extra value along the way and finally supply holders with regular yield, not to mention lead the way to 24/7 markets and tokenised collateral in trading.
While in previous years a huge crash in bitcoin might have attracted fears about a total collapse today it’s the subject of being – ultimately – the new dollar, regardless of price swings
For FX this might not have immediate consequences, especially as banks like JP Morgan still use their normal, interbank FX rate for currency prices, but an explosion in derivatives volumes, facilitated by stablecoins could very well have an impact in the near future, especially if the buyside picks up either stablecoins or other forms of tokenised money as an everyday means of payment, while deploying dormant digital asset holdings for earning a steady revenue from lending them out as collateral.
Meanwhile, the dollar keeps losing its footing as policy uncertainty cranks up and distorts moves in the currency. All of these things are leading to a re-evaluation but while in previous years a huge crash in bitcoin might have attracted fears about a total collapse today it’s the subject of being – ultimately – the new dollar, regardless of price swings.
Crypto executives have shown themselves to be adept at getting what they want in the political arena and the derivatives push is likely no coincidence. Revenues at exchanges like Coinbase have fallen as retail customers migrate to prediction markets, which leaves the boring old institutional crowd as potential clients that are sticky.
As retail users dry up, professionals can move in to take over. How and when they’ll truly arrive, is the million-dollar question.
