The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has announced the initial names as it stands up, its CEO Innovation Council, intended to delve into the development of derivatives market structures, particularly around tokenization, crypto and blockchain technology.
Prominent CEO names in the crypto sector such as Gemini’s Tyler Winklevoss, Kraken’s Arjun Sethi and Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan will join top executives from such majors as CME Group, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange and Cboe Group.
“I am grateful to the CEOs who have agreed to share their vision and experience with the commission as we move to prepare for the future and beyond,” CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham said in a statement. She said the group — whose names were gathered quickly over a two-week period — will be “specifically focused on the market structure developments in derivatives markets such as tokenization, cryptoassets, 24/7 trading, perpetual contracts, prediction markets and blockchain market infrastructure.”
The complete list for the upcoming council is:
- Shayne Coplan, CEO, Polymarket
- Craig Donohue, CEO, Cboe Global Markets
- Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO, CME Group
- Tom Farley, CEO, Bullish
- Adena Friedman, Chairman and CEO, Nasdaq
- Luke Hoersten, CEO, Bitnomial
- Tarek Mansour, CEO, Kalshi
- Kris Marszalek, CEO, Crypto.com
- David Schwimmer, CEO, LSEG
- Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO, Kraken
- Jeff Sprecher, CEO, Intercontinental Exchange
- Tyler Winklevoss, CEO, Gemini
Bullish is CoinDesk’s parent company.
The CEO group’s formation is the latest in a series of rapid-fire crypto developments from the CFTC and Pham. The interim chairman is moving quickly to finalize the final priorities of her own crypto agenda. This week, the agency announced a pilot program for the use of crypto-security in the derivatives market, which followed days after Pham’s announcement that Bitnomial (whose CEO is on the council) had initiated leveraged spot crypto trading, which she had personally encouraged as acceptable under US derivatives laws.
These are expected to be the final days of her leadership tenure at the agency, with President Donald Trump’s nominee for chairman, Mike Selig, expected to be confirmed as soon as Wednesday by the Senate. Once sworn in, he arrives amid the deluge of new cryptopolitical work orchestrated by Pham.
Although her interim presidency has lasted less than a year, she made crypto policy a central task of the derivatives watchdog, responding to President Donald Trump’s directives to push digital asset-friendly policies to make the US a leading global hub. Similarly, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, Paul Atkins, has also spent much of his bandwidth on his agency’s program known as Project Crypto.
