US President Donald Trump is planning to nominate Michael Selig as the next chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), after pulling back the nomination of Brian Quintenz.
Bloomberg reported the news on Friday, citing an unnamed Trump administration official. No official announcement has been made at the time of this writing.
Selig currently serves as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto task force chief counsel and senior adviser to SEC Chair Paul Atkins. He has been characterized as “pro-crypto” by some analysts and influencers in the crypto community, who celebrated the potential nomination.
The CFTC nomination race stalled in September after former CFTC nominee Brian Quintenz faced pressure from the Gemini crypto exchange’s co-founders, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
Trump eventually withdrew the nomination. Quintenz previously told Cointelegraph that he would return to the private sector.
Trump has mulled handing the CFTC oversight over crypto since 2024, and the regulatory agency will share oversight with the SEC under Trump’s Working Group on Digital Assets policy recommendations, which the group outlined in a July report.
Related: Crypto industry groups weigh in on CFTC’s future after key withdrawal
SEC and CFTC collaborate on crypto policy
The Working Group recommended that the CFTC should have oversight over the spot crypto markets and classified most cryptocurrencies as commodities.
All other crypto assets classified as securities, like tokenized bonds and stocks, will remain under the purview of the SEC.
The CFTC and SEC issued a joint statement in September about “harmonizing” regulatory efforts between the two agencies, which attorneys have touted as bringing much-needed clarity to the crypto industry in the US.
CFTC officials also announced a “crypto sprint” in August to implement policy recommendations from the White House’s Working Group on Digital Assets.
Joint efforts between the CFTC and SEC have also sparked rumors that the two agencies will merge to become a single regulatory entity, prompting Atkins to deny the rumors.
Atkins said that only the US president or Congress has the power to merge the agencies into a single body.
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