Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Crypto Exchange Gemini, is at the center of a gap over support from President Donald Trump’s nominees to run the unclear but high -relevant regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
He believes that former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz is a bad choice and he has spoken to Trump administration officials about it, he told Coindesk in an interview. It coincides with the White House slaming the brakes on a necessary step in Quintenz’s confirmation process in the Senate.
The administration did not give the Senate Agricultural Committee a full explanation when it stopped Quintenz’s committee vote this week, which would have made his approval to a final vote in the Senate floor. And the White House did not immediately answer questions from Coindesk about what gets in the way of the nominee who until recently served as regulatory chief of A16Z Crypto and is on the board of the prediction markets Kalshi, although the White House has continued to support the nomination.
“Many in our industry have significant concerns about this nomination,” Winklevoss told Coindesk. “Mr. Quintenz is not in line with the president’s declared agenda and goals.”
Read more: Quintenz, Trump’s choice as potential American crypto -guard dog, delayed by the White House
Winklevoss and his twin brother, Cameron, co-founder of Gemini and other common business interests, are among the prominent cryptoinsiders who have occupied an adversary-letter-speaking-in-the White House’s recent campaign to raise the American digital assets. When Trump hosted a crypto summit in the White House, the brothers sat among the primary guests. And when the president signed the guidance and establishment of national innovation for us stableecoin (Genius) Action in the law, they sat in the front row next to other prominent figures, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino.
Trump even mentioned the brothers in his remarks about the first big crypto legislative victory. So they have come to occupy a prominent place in the president’s view of the crypto industry and raise questions about whether Gemini can get Quintenz started from consideration.
At this late stage in the confirmation process, a significant delay or starting over the way of the industry’s political priorities could. While CFTC can largely be invisible to the US public, its importance to the crypto area has risen sharply as legislators in Congress are getting closer to the passing of legislation that would create crypto markets in the United States, but Tyler Winklevoss claimed it would be a mistake to put Quintenz on responsibility.
Gemini CEO claims Quintenz has the wrong prospect of protecting developers, Central Bank Digital Currenties (Cbdcs)Federal expenses and raises ethical red flags with reported communication he has done on behalf of the company he earns as a board member, Kalshi.
Developer responsibility
“Quintenz supports prosecution of smart contract developers,” Winklevoss said, calling it a “disqualifying position.”
“Smart contract developers need to be protected for innovation to flourish and to realize President Trump’s vision of turning America the crypto capital of the world,” he said.
In October 2018, the then Commissioner Quintenz gave a talk about smart contracts and said a developer would potentially be seen as legally responsible if they could acknowledge that their work would be used to skirt the government rules. With Roman Storm, a developer behind Tornado Cash, who is currently waiting for his jury decision in a US criminal case, is the question of a software developer’s responsibility at the forefront.
The industry has a strong takeover of this case and argues that creators should not be punished for how their creations are used. In about the same way as manufacturers of cars and firearms communication technologies are not pursued by criminal prosecution of how their products are used by bad players, the sector claims that digital assets should not be on the hook of how their platforms and tools are used downstream as long as the products are not actively administered by those who wrote the code.
The position of the Industry seems to be in line with a speech forms and the exchange commission’s chairman Paul Atkins gave on Thursday to announce his agency’s “Project Crypto”, where one of its efforts will be “to protect clean publishers of software code.”
Kalshi
In his objections to Quintenz, Winklevoss also marked the recent reports of the former commissioner’s communication with CFTC as a private citizen when he allegedly sought information about competitors for the prediction market platform Kalshi, where he serves on the board.
Winklevoss said that the latest revelations of E emails sought under the Law on Freedom Information, where Quintenz and an associate appear to have requested insight into the agency’s work and considerations of Kalshi -rivals, “raising serious questions.”
CFTC has led a long -term battle to regulate the prediction markets. The position for the former leadership under Chairman Rostin Behnam was that the activity should be regulated as a game, and he was concerned with the agency that politically politicized the elections of the high-profile arenas for prediction betting. Behnam’s agency fought for the industry in court, including Kalshi, though it recently gave up this dispute.
While CFTC acting chairman Caroline Pham has claimed that the agency was taking the wrong way, she said it is difficult to turn her attitude towards event contracts, which she characterized as “a sinking hole with legal uncertainty and an inappropriate restriction on the new administration.”
CFTC financing
Winklevoss also raised questions with Quintenz’s remarks about the probable need for more money and resources at CFTC as it oversees a cut of American crypto activity.
“Trump administration wants to cut bureaucracy and deregulate,” Winklevoss said. “This nominee continues to advocate dramatically rising budgets and transgressions that will lead to regulatory capture.”
In his Senate Confirmation Hearing, Quintenz suggested that a significant budget increase is likely to be necessary if the CFTC eventually gets the task of being the leading federal regulator of the crypto markets.
However, the question of funding has long been central to discussions about cryptocurrency legislation to review the CFTC authority. Republicans have routinely recognized that the agency is likely to seek more resources to allow it to supervise a broad new area in the financial sector and – for the first time – actively regulate a spot market, which means a market where actual assets are traded, such as Bitcoin
.
When asked about it in a Coindesk -tv interview this week, Top Trump Crypto advised Bo Hines that the agency may need more resources.
“Congress is aware that CFTC may require some extra work, but I think it’s something we can easily get through legislation,” Hines said.
CBDCS
Gemini-Med Founder also interpreted some of Quintenz’s past comments on digital currencies in central bank (Cbdcs) As being open to discussion of an American version – an opportunity treated as toxic by Republican politicians and most of the crypto industry. But Quintenz’s remarks in 2020 were relatively superficial, which suggested that it would be important that CFTC “remain up -to -date with legal and regulatory issues” about government roofs, as he described in public comments as an “area of special interest in me.”
Even an interest must disqualify, Winklevoss claims.
“Don’t be interested in CBDCs or entertain that kind of totalitarian technology,” he said. “That in itself is disqualifying and against everything our industry stands for.”
From congregation candidates up to Trump, Republican lawmakers have painted the concept of CBDCs as a government campaign to seek control and surveillance of the citizens’ economy. But the idea never went beyond a point of discussion with some democratic lawmakers and a topic of technical investigation among regulators and has never risen to an active project in the United States when China and Europe moved to implement government -backed digital currencies.
Federal Reserve -including President Jerome Powell, had routinely said they would not act without Congress and the White House, and if the central bank ever to issue a digital dollar, officials said transactions should be governed by US banks and not the government.
CFTC management wakuum
The break in Quintenz’s confirmation process has thrown some significant questions about the future management of CFTC. The Five Member Commission currently has only two members from each party and both have said they are leaving soon. It could potentially leave a freshly confirmed chairman alone on top of the agency.
But if Quintenz’s nomination is abandoned or markedly delayed, people who are familiar with acting President Pham’s plans suggest that she is eager to move on, potentially in the coming weeks. If she cannot be to be chairman of the Commission, the question of what is happening then – whether President Trump would be under pressure to push Democratic Commissioner Kristin Johnson out of the CFTC, so the agency would not be taken over by a Democrat’s agenda and how long CFTC can be without an official chairman.
The Senate is on its way into its riot in August, leaving his Washington work for a while. Although things come back on track, his final confirmation vote from the total Senate could be further delayed.
If Quintenz continues through the process and becomes chairman, some legal experts have doubts about the strength of decision making from a single commissioner about what is meant to be a five-member group.
“I think when you look at the decision -making rules, the agency can still act,” former CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero told Coindesk TV in a Thursday interview with Jennifer Sanasie. “But is that the best way to act?”
She suggested the potential investors in space – including from traditional financial institutions – “They all want some security.” And it can be delivered, she said, by the White House nominating more names and getting a full commission confirmed by the Senate, “But we haven’t seen it yet.”
When asked about the value of having both parties represented in the Commission during his confirmation hearing, Quintenz refused to guess Trump’s nomination process.
“The president is the leader of the exercise and the president will make his own decisions,” he said.
