All four current members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) plan to step down in the coming days and months, resigning from the agency just as it is expected to take on new responsibilities regulating the digital asset market.
In a series of departures announced in a matter of weeks, the agency’s entire top rung is set to turn over as Brian Quintenz, President Trump’s nominee for CFTC chair, prepares to take the reins.
Commissioners Summer Mersinger and Christy Goldsmith Romero both plan to depart by the end of the week, while fellow Commissioner Kristin Johnson has said she will leave “later this year.”
Acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham has promised to remain at the agency until Quintenz is confirmed, at which time she too will depart. The commission, which typically has five members, has been short one person since former Chair Rostin Behnam stepped down in January.
The relatively low-profile agency is expected to play a key role in regulating the digital asset market alongside the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The two agencies have occasionally butted heads as they seek to carve out roles in the burgeoning cryptocurrency landscape.
“If everybody is on their way out or a short-timer, it's tough to stake that claim that you should have oversight or that you should be able to carve out certain pieces of turf for oversight and supervision,” said Ian Katz, a managing partner at Capital Alpha Partners.
“Certainly, in this sort of ongoing competition between the CFTC and the SEC for regulatory turf or oversight turf, it can't be helpful if nobody's there,” he continued.
Mersinger kicked off the slew of departures in mid-May, when the Blockchain Association revealed she would be taking over as CEO after the crypto trade group’s longtime leader, Kristin Smith, left.
Just one day later, Pham confirmed she was on her way out as well, after previously hinting she might return to the private sector earlier this month.
“I have announced that I will be returning to the private sector once Brian Quintenz is confirmed as Chairman,” she said. “While I don’t have any specific plans for what’s next for me personally yet, I hope to make some over the next several months.”
The following day, Romero followed suit. Less than a week later, Johnson also announced her departure, although she gave a slightly longer runway than her colleagues.
Romero acknowledged the drawbacks of the CFTC’s dwindling ranks Tuesday, especially if the agency does receive additional authorities.
“What happens if the CFTC gets down to one and gets new authority for crypto?” she said at a Brookings Institution event. “It's going to be really, really hard, right? You're not going to have the same push and pull.”
“You're not going to have people who say, ‘I've spent my career doing financial stability, and I think we need this for financial stability. We need to be more focused on customer protections,’” she added. “And so, I worry about that. I worry about that at the CFTC, and I worry about that at other agencies as well.”
The CFTC is expected to take on a key role in crypto regulation, given some digital assets are considered commodities. However, debate continues over where exactly the line falls between securities and commodities in the market and who the proper regulator is — the SEC or the CFTC.
The SEC has taken a much more assertive approach toward crypto under both former President Biden and under Trump, despite key differences.
During the Biden administration, former SEC Chair Gary Gensler often clashed with the industry, which argued he failed to prove clear regulatory rules before bringing numerous enforcement actions.
When Commissioner Mark Uyeda took over as acting chair for the first few months of the Trump administration, he quickly walked back several lawsuits against and investigations into crypto firms.
“Now you have Paul Atkins at the SEC, and he's raring to go on crypto oversight and ready to write some rules,” Katz said of the SEC's new chair, who was sworn in last month.
“They can do things because they have the leaders there, and also more of a sort of air of legitimacy since they have actual commissioners, and even one on the other side, the Democratic side,” he added, noting the SEC has four out of its typical five members.
While the two agencies attempt to carve out their own purview in the crypto space, Congress is gearing up to consider legislation to formally divvy up responsibility between the SEC and the CFTC.
Republican lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee released a discussion draft of market structure legislation earlier this month, as they seek to meet Trump and GOP leadership’s ambitious goal of getting two key crypto bills across the finish line by August.
If the CFTC receives new authorities to regulate crypto, potential slowdowns caused by the agency’s departures could be compounded by its new workload, especially if staff leave alongside commissioners, said Owen Tedford, a senior research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors.
“I would just imagine that there’s less bandwidth at the agency as a whole, so things might get more lost in the shuffle or proceed slower than they normally would,” he told The Hill.
“Some of those regulatory slowdowns and enforcement procedure slowdowns and just staff burnout maybe in some cases could be increased or get more dramatic just because there is now this additional pile of work,” he added.
However, this could also bring the administration’s attention to filling out the ranks of the CFTC, which is unlikely to be a priority otherwise, Tedford noted.
“I think that’s the kind of thing that you could see more Trump administration interest in trying to fill out the commission, at least with other Republicans, to spread some of the work around,” he said.
Trump has made crypto a key priority of his second term in office since embracing the industry during the 2024 campaign.
In the first few months of his administration, he has welcomed crypto leaders to the White House and established a strategic bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile.
However, the industry has long argued that what is needed are clear regulatory rules of the road — an endeavor that will likely require Congress.
This effort has been complicated by Trump and his family’s growing ties to the crypto industry. Trump Media and Technology Group, Truth Social’s parent company, announced Tuesday that it had raised $2.5 billion to buy bitcoin and build its own reserve.
A stablecoin launched by Trump and his sons’ crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, was also recently used to complete a $2 billion transaction between an Emirati firm and crypto exchange Binance.
And the president attended a dinner with the top investors in his meme coin last week, where some spent millions of dollars to secure a spot. These developments have fueled conflict of interest concerns among Democrats, prompting greater pushback to crypto legislation.
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