CFTC Ends 30-Year No-Deny Policy, Allows Public Disputes in Settlements

• CFTC ends a 30-year rule requiring defendants to stay silent about allegations as a settlement condition.
• Companies can now settle CFTC cases while publicly disputing the agency’s version of events.
• CFTC moved to vacate its $5 million Gemini settlement, describing the original case as politically targeted.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has rescinded a policy that required defendants to agree not to publicly deny the agency’s allegations as a condition of settling enforcement cases. The rule had been in place for nearly 30 years.

From now on, companies can settle CFTC enforcement actions without being legally bound to silence about whether they actually did what the agency accused them of doing.

“For nearly three decades, the Commission has refused to settle cases unless the defendant promised not to publicly deny the Commission’s allegations,” said CFTC Chairman Michael Selig. “I am pleased that we are rescinding the no-deny policy consistent with regulators throughout the government.”

The no-deny policy had been a specific grievance for crypto companies for years. Under the old framework, settling with the CFTC meant accepting language that prevented a company from publicly disputing the agency’s version of events, even if the company believed the claims were wrong, politically motivated, or factually inaccurate.

The practical effect was that settlements became de facto admissions in the court of public opinion, regardless of what actually happened. Companies faced a difficult choice between fighting costly litigation or accepting reputational damage through forced silence.

The rescission removes that constraint. Companies can now negotiate settlements while retaining the right to publicly disagree with the agency’s characterization of their conduct.

Just before this announcement, the CFTC moved to vacate its $5 million settlement with crypto exchange Gemini. Chairman Selig described the original case as politically targeted, a direct signal that the current commission views several enforcement actions from the previous administration as having crossed the line from legitimate oversight into regulatory overreach.

The SEC had already abolished its own equivalent no-deny policy in May, making the CFTC the second major financial regulator to make this change within weeks.

The rescission does not erase existing investigations, rewrite commodity law, or give companies a pass on genuine violations. The CFTC retains full discretion to negotiate admissions as part of settlements when it chooses to do so. What changes is that silence can no longer be a mandatory condition of resolution.

For the crypto industry, the change aligns with a broader regulatory reset under the Trump administration, in which both the SEC and CFTC have been methodically dismantling enforcement postures they consider politically driven under the previous leadership.

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