Backpack US has appointed Michael S. Piwowar, former acting chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to its board of directors. The move comes as the crypto exchange pursues an aggressive U.S. expansion, including plans for perpetual futures trading and a future public listing.
Piwowar served as an SEC commissioner from 2013 to 2018 after being appointed by President Barack Obama. During the early months of Donald Trump's first administration in 2017, he briefly held the role of acting chair between the tenures of Mary Jo White and Jay Clayton. While at the SEC, Piwowar was among the commissioners who stated that bitcoin should not be classified as a security, though the agency took a skeptical stance toward the ICO boom. Notably, during his acting chair tenure, the SEC rejected the Winklevoss twins’ application for a bitcoin ETF. Before joining the SEC, Piwowar was chief economist of the Senate Banking Committee, where he helped shape the Dodd-Frank Act and JOBS Act provisions.
Backpack US, which began as a Solana-based wallet from the team behind the Mad Lads NFT collection, views the appointment as a strategic advantage in a shifting regulatory landscape. “This moment differs from prior cycles,” Piwowar said in the announcement. The exchange recently launched a stock trading platform for traditional and tokenized equities and disclosed plans to go public. Its corporate treasury would allocate 37.5% of the total 1-billion token supply, with an equity-linked staking model rewarding stakers with a share of 20% of corporate equity.
Backpack US President Mark Wetjen, himself a former CFTC commissioner and acting chairman, emphasized the significance of recent regulatory developments. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) authorized Kalshi to offer the first regulated bitcoin perpetual futures contract in the U.S., a decision Backpack says paves the way for its own U.S. perpetuals trading—products currently offered only in the European Union. “The CFTC’s approval of bitcoin perpetuals last week is a defining moment,” Wetjen said. “Products once limited offshore now have a U.S. route.” Wetjen also cited growing coordination between the CFTC and SEC as a sign of an evolving framework.
Piwowar’s addition gives Backpack a direct line to the regulatory thinking that once shaped the agency's early approach to digital assets. With the exchange’s broader ambitions, the board appointment underscores how former top regulators are increasingly moving into the crypto industry.
