Brain Quintenz, the choice of President Donald Trump to take over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which should be the first American crypto regulator, needs a panel of breakdown of the Senatorial Agriculture Committee before being able to obtain a confirmation vote. But this step has now been delayed a second time.
The committee was to vote on the appointment of the former CFTC commissioner on Monday afternoon, but a last-minute change carried out its progress of the counterpart during the planned vote, without an explanation offered. After his committee vote has already been delayed compared to last week with even less notice, Quintenz has trouble jumping this first obstacle before the wider Senate confirmation decision.
Committee staff did not immediately respond to the request for comments from Coindesk.
Next week, the Senate will be dispersed when it is for its recess in August, leaving any approval of the suspended staff delayed for new weeks. This leaves the American agency of goods in a tenuous position concerning what is already a situation of delicate leadership at the CFTC.
Quintenz is supposed to take over at a time when the Congress weighs legislation that is raising the CFTC to regulate the majority of the American crypto markets, including trade in Bitcoin (BTC). Meanwhile, the regulator is led by Commissioner Caroline Pham, a republican that Trump installed as acting president. But she plans to go on the arrival of her permanent replacement, and her republican colleagues have already left.
This means that the remaining commissioner would be Democrat Kristin Johnson, who also announced her intention to leave soon. If it spends before or shortly after the arrival of the Republican President, Quintenz – if he was confirmed – would be left as a single member of the five -person committee.
President Trump led a political battle in the executive branch agencies by trying to strip them of the Democrats, despite the rules in which the commissions are supposed to be made up of members of each of the two main parties. At the CFTC, the circumstances perform this without Trump’s intervention, although some agency observers wonder on the legal basis of political decisions if they are taken by a commission in one person.
However, a president of the CFTC must be confirmed first. Much of the rest of the list of Trump’s financial regulators has been completed, notably the chairman of the securities commission and the trade commission, Paul Atkins.
While the House of Representatives recently adopted the law on the digital asset market with a massive bipartisan vote, this bill to regulate American crypto markets (including the allocation of the CFTC as a new watchdog for the trading spot of digital assets which are not securities), the Senate works on its own version of this bill. The president of the senatorial banking committee, Tim Scott, has set a deadline of September 30 to finish it, but the Senatorial Agriculture Committee must also disconcert, leaving the SCOTT rapid calendar in a certain uncertainty.
Read more: American CFTC Johnson says she will also go out, leaving an empty house for the incoming chair
