Trump’s pick to run CFTC, Selig, tells Senator Crypto a ‘critical mission’ at the agency
United States President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Mike Selig, told Sen. at his confirmation hearing Wednesday He champions the president’s desire to set a US path for crypto regulation.
The Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC that will be the top US regulator for Crypto, weighed in on Selig’s nomination, and Chairman John Boozman asked about Digital Asset Oversight in his first question.
“The CFTC has a critical mission to protect these markets,” Selig said. He told lawmakers, “This is a real opportunity to come up with a framework that can allow software developers to thrive, for new exchanges to crop up that protect investors and have the kinds of controls that you would expect in an exchange and make sure that we have the proper disclosure requirements that we normally have in our financial markets.”
The agency has been run by acting chairman Caroline Pham since the start of the year, when Trump named her to the interim role. He is set aggressive agenda For crypto, Speaking recently this week on the number of Digital Assets initiatives in the agency. But Pham had been planning his departure for months, waiting for a permanent replacement but was stymied in his departure when Trump’s previous choice — former commissioner Brian Quintenz — backed out.
Selig could take over the CFTC soon, as the committee has scheduled his confirmation hearing for Thursday afternoon, which could send him to the full Senate for a final vote. If he is confirmed, he will be single member of what it means to be a five-member, bipartisan commission. That would come with efficiency, as he would be the only commissioner who would have to approve crypto policy moves, but some agency watchers wonder if the missing commissioners will make the agency’s actions vulnerable to legal challenge.
Today, Selig has been a top official working on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force, so he is well-versed in the ongoing policy needs for the industry. At the hearing, he was asked about Decentralized Finance (Defi), a controversial topic in the ongoing conversation in Congress on a US Crypto market structure bill.
“Blockchain allows such a wide swath of new types of products, services, applications, and so it may not make sense in many cases to apply financial regulation, for example, to a video game app that runs on a blockchain,” Selig said. “So I think when we think about Defi, it’s something of a buzzword, but really we should be looking for onchain markets and onchain applications, and thinking about the features of these applications, as well as where there is an actual intermediary involved.”
As the lawmakers mentioned during the hearing, the agency has been reduced by as much as 20% in staff recently as the Trump administration has reduced the federal workforce, and it is taking on new duties – including overseeing crypto activity. But Selig would not commit to increasing staffing levels at the agency, saying he would have to look once he arrived. People familiar with the CFTC’s internal planning said the agency is putting some focus on the enforcement division, trying to increase that staff and establish a specialty trial unit even as it hires experienced government prosecutors.
When asked about Bitcoin mining, Selig called it “critical infrastructure.”
“We should build them in the United States,” Selig said. “We must make sure we protect our miners and infrastructure.”
Read more: The US regulator that can rule over digital assets is pushing towards spot trading of crypto
