Altcoins News

Story: CFTC Chairman Selig Faces Pressure as Trump Administration Delays Filling Four Vacant Seats

By Sakamoto Nashi

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How the Old CFTC Actually Ran. The last fully staffed commission ran from April 2022 through February 2025 and leaned Democratic.

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What the Crypto Industry Actually Wants. The industry's preferred outcome is pretty clear: Selig plus two Republicans holding the majority,…

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Broader Policy Shift Under Trump. There's a bigger backdrop here. Biden's 2022 executive order treated digital assets mainly as…

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The CFTC is, right now, basically a one-man show. Chairman Michael Selig sits as the sole voting member of a commission that's supposed to have five, and the White House is…

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The administration has reviewed candidates for all four vacant seats, with two of those slots earmarked for Democrats. That's the law, pretty much.

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That last part matters more than it sounds.

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The two Republican commissioners, Summer Mersinger and Caroline Pham, dissented regularly. Mersinger voted against the Ooki DAO enforcement action — the first-ever CFTC case…

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The industry's preferred outcome is pretty clear: Selig plus two Republicans holding the majority, with two Democrat moderates rounding out the panel.

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A more evenly split commission, or one where the Democratic nominees turn out to be enforcement-minded, is a different story.

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More context: CFTC Seeks Dismissal of CME’s Crypto Futures Lawsuit, Citing No Legal Standing

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The CLARITY Act sits right in the middle of all this. The bill wants to draw a hard line between what the CFTC oversees and what falls to the SEC — a question that's been murky…

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The September 15 procedural vote is the next real test. If it fails, the White House might just leave the seats empty and move on.

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But tone doesn't write rules. And a commission with one voting member can't do much rulemaking at all.

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More context: OpenReserve Secures Full National Bank Charter, Defying Crypto Industry Norms

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The crypto industry knows this. And it's watching the Senate calendar the way traders watch a Fed announcement — closely, nervously, with a lot riding on the outcome.

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