The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has established a new 35-member Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC) and appointed numerous senior executives from the cryptocurrency industry to serve as advisors. The committee's mandate is to provide expertise and recommendations on how the commodities regulator should oversee breakthrough technologies, including blockchain and artificial intelligence, within financial markets.
CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig stated, "Today marks an important and energizing moment at the CFTC as the Innovation Advisory Committee takes shape. The IAC’s work will help ensure the CFTC’s decisions reflect market realities so the agency can future-proof its markets and develop clear rules of the road for the Golden Age of American Financial Markets." He emphasized that bringing together participants from every market corner makes the IAC a major asset for modernizing regulations.
The committee's formation signals the CFTC's continued push under Selig's administration toward a more permissive regulatory regime for digital assets and financial innovations like prediction markets. This effort aligns with "Project Crypto," a joint initiative with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) aimed at modernizing crypto regulation.
The IAC's composition is heavily weighted toward crypto industry leaders. Blockchain representation includes Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana Labs, Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple, Sergey Nazarov of Chainlink Labs, and Hayden Adams of Uniswap Labs. Major centralized exchanges are also represented, with executives from Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gemini, Kraken, and Bullish appointed, alongside trading platforms Bitnomial and Robinhood.
Notably, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has joined the panel. This comes weeks after he withdrew support for the Senate's CLARITY Act, citing concerns over banking lobby-driven limits on stablecoin rewards and provisions he argued could restrict tokenized products and constrain DeFi. Armstrong warned the bill risked "stifling innovation" by potentially eroding the CFTC's authority.
The committee also includes founders of leading prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi, crypto venture capitalists from firms like a16z crypto, Framework Ventures, and Paradigm, and executives from traditional finance giants including Cboe, CME Group, DTCC, Nasdaq, and the Options Clearing Corporation.
The move occurs against the backdrop of ongoing congressional debate over the CLARITY Act, which seeks to define the regulatory split between the CFTC (overseeing digital commodities) and the SEC (overseeing securities-like tokens). While this division has gained acceptance, stablecoin regulation—specifically whether crypto firms can offer yield on dollar-pegged tokens—remains a contentious provision drawing pressure from the banking industry.
