US President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Mike Selig, told senators in his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he will defend the president’s intention to set a US path for crypto regulation.
The Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC, which will be a leading U.S. regulator for crypto, weighed Selig’s nomination, and Chairman John Boozman asked about oversight of digital assets 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 that can allow software developers to thrive, for new exchanges to emerge that will protect investors and have the type of controls that you would expect in an exchange and ensure that we have the right disclosure requirements that we typically have in our financial markets.”
The agency has been run by acting chairwoman Caroline Pham since the start of the year, when Trump appointed her to the interim role. She has set an aggressive agenda for crypto and as recently as this week spoke about the number of digital asset initiatives at the agency. But Pham has been planning his departure for months and awaiting a permanent replacement, but was thwarted in his departure when Trump’s previous pick — former commissioner Brian Quintenz — was withdrawn.
Selig could soon take over the CFTC, as the committee has already set a consideration of his confirmation for Thursday afternoon, which could send him to the full Senate for a final vote. If confirmed, he will be the sole member of what is meant to be a five-person, bipartisan commission. That will come with efficiency as he will be the only commissioner to approve crypto policy moves, but some agency watchers wonder if the lack of commissioners will make the agency’s actions vulnerable to legal challenges.
Currently, Selig has been a top official working on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force, so he is well versed in the ongoing policy needs of the industry. At the hearing, he was asked about decentralized finance (DeFi), a controversial topic in the ongoing negotiations in Congress on a US crypto market structure bill.
“Blockchain enables such a wide variety of new types of products, services, applications, and so it may not make sense in many cases to apply financial regulation to, say, a video game app running on a blockchain,” Selig said. “So I think when we think about DeFi, it’s kind of a buzzword, but really we should be looking at onchain markets and onchain applications and thinking about the functions of those applications, as well as where there’s an actual middleman involved.”
As lawmakers mentioned during the hearing, the agency has been reduced by as much as 20% in staff recently as the Trump administration has reduced the federal workforce and it takes on new tasks — including oversight of crypto activity. But Selig wouldn’t commit to increasing the agency’s staff, saying he would take a look when he arrives. People familiar with the CFTC’s internal planning have said the agency is putting some focus on the enforcement division, trying to increase that staff again and create a special litigation unit through the hiring of experienced state prosecutors.
When asked about bitcoin mining, Selig called it “critically important infrastructure.”
“We should have them built in the United States,” Selig said. “We should make sure we protect our miners and infrastructure.”
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