The choice of President Donald Trump to be president of the guard dog for American products, Brian Quintenz, answered Crypto questions more than any other subject during his Senate confirmation audience on Tuesday, and he assured legislators that the agency can walk on land between uncommapped innovation and robust consumer guarantees.
Even if Quintenz awaits the vote of the Senatorial Committee for Agriculture on the advisability of advancing its appointment as president of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Congress works on the legislation on the structure of the market which could raise this agency as a marquee regulator of American cryptographic activity. Quintenz, a former CFTC commissioner, is no stranger to this sector, having been a policy chief of the A16Z venture capital company.
“I have always considered market structure legislation as an opportunity to be both pro-client protection and a pro-innovation at the same time,” he told senators weighing his appointment, which must ultimately be approved by the entire Senate before being able to resume the Commission. He said the bill could “provide the clarity of buildings, entrepreneurs, innovators to develop products” while ensuring that regulated companies appropriately protect users from these products.
“Congress should create an appropriate market regulatory regime to ensure that the complete promise of this technology can be carried out, and I am fully ready to use my experience and expertise to help this effort as well as to execute any widened mission if the legislation is adopted in law,” said Quintenz, adding that it is ready to work under the current CFTC powers “to provide this technology”.
Quintenz would join a commission abandoned by the commissioners. By status, the CFTC has five members – with three of the ruling party – but the members have left or are leaving, including the acting president, Caroline Pham, who said that she was leaving when Quintenz begins to work. The lonely democrat, Kristen Johnson, said that she would leave “later this year”, leaving a certain uncertainty about her timing. Quintenz can therefore serve in front of a single democrat before finally working alone for a certain time, leaving a potential legal vulnerability for any unilateral policy.
Some of the Democratic senators noted that the Trump administration had systematically stripped of the regulatory commissions of their democratic members – described by Senator Raphael Warnock as “political purges” – and asked Quintenz if he encouraged the White House to fill the two sides of the list.
“The president is the chief of the executive, and the president will make his own decisions. Quintenz said. He added later:” I am not telling the president what to do. “”
He granted that the agency might need more funding if it made the new monumental task as a cash regulator of digital products, which would include Bitcoin transactions
. Quintenz said the new staff would be more effective by “an adjusted technology approach” that makes employees more effective.
Quintenz has also answered a number of questions on the prediction markets, another area with which he had direct experience as a member of the board of directors of Kalshi, which fought a legal battle with the CFTC on the regulation of event contracts. He defended these event contracts as an appropriate “coverage tool”.
“I believe that the law on the exchange of goods is very clear on the objective of the derivative markets, the aim of risk management and prices discovery, and that events [contracts] Can serve a function in this mandate, “he said.
Read more: Trump to exploit the former CFTC commissioner, the head of the A16Z policy, Brian Quintenz, for the head of the CFTC
