PANews reported on February 8 that according to CoinDesk, Caroline Pham, acting head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is promoting a tokenization pilot program backed by stablecoins. An upcoming summit will invite executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, Crypto.com and other digital asset companies to participate. The specific date and further details of the Digital Asset CEO Forum have not yet been determined. Last November, Fan proposed the idea of a tokenization regulatory sandbox through his advisory committee, the Global Markets Advisory Committee, but the agency's previous leadership did not adopt it.

“I am pleased to announce this groundbreaking initiative for the U.S. digital asset markets,” Acting Chairman Pham said in a statement on Friday. “I look forward to working with market participants to deliver on the Trump Administration’s commitment to ensure that the United States leads the world in economic opportunity.” According to the agency, the initiative, which is based on what Fan calls the philosophy of “responsible innovation,” will advance the use of non-cash collateral through distributed ledger technology.

Pham’s advisory committee had anticipated allowing market participants to experiment with the use of non-traditional collateral in its recommendations last November. The recommendations stated: “By improving the operational infrastructure of assets that are already eligible for regulatory margin, blockchain or other distributed ledger technologies (DLT) can help reduce or eliminate some of the challenges without changing collateral eligibility rules. Market participants can also use their existing policies, procedures, practices and processes to identify, evaluate and manage risks of using DLT, just as they do with other forms of market infrastructure and technology.”