The chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Rostin Behnam, will leave his position in less than two weeks, but he still has a message for regulators and lawmakers seeking to address concerns about digital assets.

In prepared remarks for a talk on January 8 at The Brookings Institution, Behnam said that the expansion of the cryptocurrency sector into traditional financial institutions "without comprehensive regulatory safeguards" could present challenges for his successors at the CFTC.

Behnam added that he planned to "advocate for the CFTC" to address this regulatory gap after leaving the commission in February.

"[...] the era of cryptocurrencies has highlighted the need for our set of rules to address the current course of the derivatives industry," Behnam said. "As more entities seek to move away from traditional and familiar models, which have evolved over decades and withstood countless crises, towards structures that combine unique activities around increasingly novel products, new questions arise."