The Battle Moves to the Clearing Layer: Europe and the US Target Tokenized Collateral and Prediction Markets on the Same Day

On October 9, ESMA asked whether tokenized collateral can be converted into liquidity fast enough when a clearing member defaults, while the CFTC proposed folding sports and political event contracts into the swap definition. Global regulators are shifting their focus from "who may issue assets" to "whether the clearing and derivatives layer can absorb them."

ESMA: Prove You Can Convert Collateral in a Default Before Tokenizing It

On October 9, 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its Call for Evidence on the CCP collateral tokenisation (ESMA91-1505572268-4934), inviting central counterparties (CCPs), clearing members and their clients, central securities depositories (CSDs), custodians, triparty agents, tokenisation/DLT providers and legal experts to submit evidence by January 15, 2027. ESMA made clear the exercise is not intended to reassess or expand the categories of assets eligible as CCP collateral; it answers a single question: whether tokenisation changes how otherwise eligible assets are transferred, managed, protected and converted into funds.

ESMA groups current arrangements into two operating models: "digital twins" – tokenized representations of assets that remain recorded in conventional infrastructure, mirroring rights or helping mobilise the asset without necessarily becoming the authoritative ownership record – and "native DLT assets", where issuance, holding and transfer all occur on the ledger, with hybrid arrangements also in scope. For digital twins, ESMA asks which record prevails when the ledger, a custodian’s books and securities-depository records conflict. For native assets, it cautions that holding a private key or technically controlling a token does not automatically establish legal ownership; property, securities and insolvency law still determine the rights a CCP can enforce. The paper contains 30 questions spanning operating models, legal certainty, liquidity, haircuts and operational resilience.

Löber’s quote sets the yardstick for the whole exercise: collateral must be high quality, legally enforceable, highly liquid and easily operationally available, including in stressed conditions and after a clearing member default. ESMA stresses that liquidity must be verified "at the moment of default": a tokenized government bond carries the same credit and market risk as its conventional twin, but if selling, repoing or redeeming the token takes longer, relies on a single platform, or introduces conversion and cyber risk, its collateral treatment changes. Tokenized cash is called out too: central bank money, stablecoins, e-money tokens (EMTs) and tokenized deposits are all listed as candidate settlement assets, but stablecoins risk deviating from par and other instruments depend on issuer credit and redemption terms. A CCP must confirm whether such instruments legally discharge obligations and whether the required currency can be obtained within the default-management window.

On the legal side, the exercise examines the distributed-ledger counterpart of the "possession or control" standard under the Financial Collateral Directive – whether control of a wallet or private key has legal significance for creating, perfecting or enforcing a security interest – and how, under the Settlement Finality Directive, settlement protections arise from specific operational events being legally recognised as final, rather than from technological features. ESMA is blunt: without an enforceable proprietary right, a token holder ranks as an unsecured creditor. It also reveals that the only tokenised collateral project it has seen so far in its EMIR CCP supervisory colleges is HQLAx. Industry has already moved ahead: Eurex Clearing launched the first CCP DLT collateral service in July 2025, JPMorgan executed the first live deal for Dutch pension investor PGGM, and in September 2026 the Eurosystem went live with Pontes, letting institutions settle tokenised trades in central bank money.

ESMA’s review comes on the heels of the United States: in December 2025, the CFTC’s Market Participants Division and Division of Clearing and Risk issued Staff Letters 25-39 and 26-05, allowing futures commission merchants (FCMs) to accept payment stablecoins, bitcoin and ether as margin. Once a derivatives clearing organisation (DCO) clears a "minimal credit, market and liquidity risk" bar, crypto assets and stablecoins can be posted as initial margin, with brokers holding at least a 20% haircut against their own bitcoin and ether positions and 2% against payment stablecoins, aligning with SEC broker-dealer guidance. Washington green-lights while Europe asks questions: the same issue is unfolding at opposite speeds in the two jurisdictions.

CFTC: Event Contracts Are Swaps, Gambling Is Not – One Definition Settles the Prediction-Market Fight

That same day, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced two actions (Release 9310-26). First, a proposed rule (RIN 3038-AF82) would expressly add "event contracts, including those based on sports-, politics-, cultural and weather-related events" to the list of swap inclusions in 17 CFR Part 1, on the grounds that such contracts are financial instruments "commonly known to the trade as swaps" – a move to resolve classification ambiguity. Second, an interim final rule, effective immediately, explicitly excludes casino-style gambling products (including sportsbook wagers and casino games) from the swap definition. Both measures carry 30-day comment windows running from Federal Register publication.

Chairman Selig’s framing is unambiguous: these products are commodity derivatives squarely within the CFTC’s remit under the Commodity Exchange Act and within the agency’s exclusive jurisdiction. The practical consequences are immediate: retail participants may trade swaps only on a designated contract market (DCM), while a swap execution facility (SEF) may list event-contract swaps but only for eligible contract participants (ECPs, generally institutional investors). The CFTC proposes no new reporting, recordkeeping or third-party disclosure duties, and says the rule would not alter existing trading rules or exchange requirements.

The backdrop is a fast-growing market and a string of conflicting court rulings. The CFTC discloses that as of September 1, 2026, at least seven registered DCMs offered sports-related event contracts to US users; more than fifteen DCM applications have been filed since 2025, with many applicants planning products that could qualify as event contracts; and in August 2026, monthly event-contract volume across reporting DCMs was about $1.5 billion, of which sports accounted for roughly $1.2 billion, politics (including election contracts) about $11 million and weather about $4 million. On the legal side, three federal circuit courts have reached opposite conclusions on whether sports-outcome contracts are swaps: the Third Circuit ruled in April 2026 that sports event contracts traded on a CFTC-licensed market fit the swap definition; the Ninth Circuit reached the opposite preliminary conclusion in August; and the Sixth Circuit held in September that sports events bear no inherent association with financial, economic or commercial consequences.

The state-level fight is just as intense. Minnesota enacted a criminal prohibition covering the operation or facilitation of prediction markets; Arizona filed a twenty-count criminal information against a DCM offering sports and election contracts; New York sought a court order to stop related contracts in the state; and courts in Michigan, Washington and Nevada ordered geofencing of sports-related contracts. In the Sixth Circuit’s September 25 alternative holding in the Kalshi case, even assuming the contracts were swaps, the Commodity Exchange Act does not expressly or impliedly preempt the gambling laws of Ohio and Tennessee. That means a swap definition may not settle the preemption fight with state gambling law – a question the Supreme Court will ultimately decide. Nonprofit group Better Markets has criticised the definition for turning sports event contracts into de facto sports betting.

Europe’s Backdrop: Digital Euro by 2029 Alongside the Stablecoin Wind-Down

ESMA’s consultation is not an isolated move. On October 8, ESMA issued a formal opinion requiring EU crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) to wind down all services involving non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins within 90 days, by January 8, 2027 at the latest (covering trading, exchange, custody, transfers and investment advice), with only limited exit services such as selling, exchange and withdrawal permitted in the interim. On October 6, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone described the digital euro’s acceptance-layer design in a speech: banks and regulated payment service providers would distribute it and manage customer relationships, the ECB would supply the core infrastructure, and agreements with the European Card Payment Cooperation, nexo standards and the Berlin Group would reuse existing technical standards. An internal presentation document reported on October 9 shows the digital euro is planned for first issuance in the second half of 2029, covering all online shops in the euro area, some physical retailers and person-to-person transfers in its first wave, supporting both online and offline transactions. Lagarde has said digital euro legislation should pass Parliament by the end of 2026.

Put these three pieces together and Europe’s picture becomes clear: stablecoins are being wound down, tokenized collateral is under cautious review, and the digital form of central bank money is being accelerated. What regulators want is not "on-chain finance" per se, but an order in which central bank money and compliant infrastructure sit at the core and tokenisation expands only safely at the margins. That also explains why ESMA’s concerns about stablecoins as CCP settlement assets are so concentrated: in the regulatory design, central bank money is the default anchor for collateral and settlement, and private stablecoins are only condition-bound alternatives.

Implications for Practitioners