US President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Mike Selig, told senators during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he would defend the president’s intention to chart the US path on crypto regulation.
The Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC, which will be one of the primary U.S. crypto regulators, weighed 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 develop a framework for software developers to thrive, to allow new exchanges to arise that will protect investors and have the kinds of controls that you would expect from an exchange and ensure that we have the right disclosure requirements that we typically have in our financial markets.” »
The agency has been led by Acting Chair Caroline Pham since earlier this year, when Trump appointed her to the temporary position. She has set an aggressive agenda for crypto, speaking out as recently as this week about the number of digital asset initiatives within the agency. But Pham had been planning his departure for months, waiting for a permanent replacement, but his departure was stalled when Trump’s previous pick — former Commissioner Brian Quintenz — was withdrawn.
Selig could soon take over the CFTC, as the committee has already set consideration of his confirmation for Thursday afternoon, which could send it to the full Senate for a final vote. If confirmed, he will become the sole member of what is expected to be a five-member bipartisan commission. This will come with efficiency, as he will be the only commissioner who will have to approve crypto policy measures, but some agency observers wonder whether the missing commissioners will make the agency’s actions vulnerable to legal challenges.
Currently, Selig is a senior official working on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force, so he is well versed in the industry’s current policy needs. During the hearing, he was asked about decentralized finance (DeFi), a controversial topic in ongoing negotiations in Congress over a US crypto market structure bill.
“Blockchain enables a wide range of new types of products, services and applications, and so it may not make sense in many cases to apply financial regulation, for example to a video game application that runs on a blockchain,” Selig said. “So I think when we think about DeFi, it’s a buzzword, but really we should be looking at on-chain marketplaces and applications, and thinking about the functionality of those applications, as well as where a real intermediary is involved.”
As lawmakers mentioned during the hearing, the agency has recently seen its staff cut by up to 20%, as the Trump administration reduced the federal workforce and it takes on new duties, including monitoring crypto activity. But Selig would not commit to increasing the agency’s staff, saying he would have to take a look once he arrived. People familiar with the CFTC’s internal planning said the agency is emphasizing the enforcement division, trying to increase that staff again and build a specialized trial unit by recruiting experienced government prosecutors.
When asked about Bitcoin mining, Selig called it “vitally important infrastructure.”
“We should have them built in the United States,” Selig said. “We need to make sure we protect our miners and our infrastructure.”
Read more: The US regulator that can govern digital assets pushing towards spot crypto trading
