The Commodity Futures Future US Commission Commodity Futures Trading is about to go to one commissioner when Democrat Kristin Johnson leaves the agency next week, and the only other person waiting behind the scenes to join the regulator is President President Donald Trump, Brian Quintenz.
Since September 3, the commission of five members will fall to one, because that is when Johnson will be released, she said in an announcement on Tuesday.
“By advancing a program in the name of growth, it is essential not to dismantle fundamental resilience which supports financial stability and protects the wider economy,” she said in a farewell declaration encouraging the agency to stick to fundamental principles as new technologies are on board.
Alone at the level of the commissioner will be the acting president, Caroline Pham, a defender of the cryptography that Trump appointed to lead the agency when he asked for a permanent president. Trump’s choice was finally the former commissioner Brian Quintenz, who worked as a chief of politicians in A16z and for the Kalshi prediction market. But the White House delayed the Quintenz confirmation process, leaving it in a certain uncertainty while the Senate returns from its summer recreation next week.
The candidate was openly opposed by Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Crypto Exchange Gemini and one of Trump’s privileged crypto initiates, but a large part of the industry recently asked Trump to accelerate Quintenz towards confirmation.
The CFTC is the American regulator of derivative markets, although it awaits an action of the congress to give it the power to control the market in cash for crypto products, like Bitcoin . The agency has already been a major player in the surveillance of the United States in cryptography, after pushing a number of major application measures and has led discussions on how to incorporate innovations in the cryptographic sector in the massive world markets of basic products.
If Quintenz replaces Pham at the top of the agency, she said that she intended to go and return to the private sector.
This will mean that Quintenz would direct the solo commission, the four short members, and Trump has so far shown no sign of others. The administration of the president was characterized by a campaign aimed at reducing the democrats of the regulatory commissions, abandoning tradition – and the legal mandate – to have the two parties involved in decisions in federal agencies. Quintenz said he’s going ahead with the choices that Trump made.
Although some have argued that giving it a commission of five people could make it vulnerable to legal challenges on its political measures, there is nothing specific in the law which prohibits the regulator from continuing on this basis. He no doubt rationalizes the examination of the new rules to a single office rather than five, but the work of drafting any regulations of cryptography could already be hampered by the important reductions of staff seen since the Trump administration began to reduce the federal workforce.
Read more: While CFTC awaits the new president, the acting chief Pham takes place on Crypto
