The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has announced the initial names as it establishes its CEO Innovation Council aimed at delving into derivatives market structure developments, especially around tokenization, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
Big-name crypto CEO names, such as Gemini’s Tyler Winklevoss, Kraken’s Arjun Sethi, and Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan, will join CEOs from cornerstone firms such as CME Group, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange, and Cboe Group.
“I am grateful to the CEOs who agreed to share their vision and experience with the commission as we begin to prepare for the future and beyond,” CFTC Acting Chairwoman Caroline Pham said in a statement. He said the group, whose names were quickly assembled over a two-week period, will “specifically focus on market structure developments in derivatives markets, such as tokenization, cryptoassets, 24/7 trading, perpetual contracts, prediction markets and blockchain market infrastructure.”
The full list for the incoming council is:
- Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket
- Craig Donohue, CEO of Cboe Global Markets
- Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO of CME Group
- Tom Farley, CEO, bullish
- Adena Friedman, president and CEO of Nasdaq
- Luke Hoersten, CEO of Bitnomial
- Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi
- Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com
- David Schwimmer, CEO of LSEG
- Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Kraken
- Jeff Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange
- Tyler Winklevoss, CEO, Gemini
Bullish is the parent company of CoinDesk.
The formation of the CEO group is the latest in a rapid series of crypto developments from the CFTC and Pham. The interim president is moving quickly to finalize the final priorities of her own crypto agenda. This week, the agency announced a pilot program for the use of crypto collateral in the derivatives market, which came days after Pham’s announcement that Bitnomial (whose CEO is on the board) had begun spot trading of cryptocurrencies with leverage that she had personally encouraged as acceptable under US derivatives laws.
These are expected to be the final days of his tenure at the agency, and President Donald Trump’s nominee, Mike Selig, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday. Once he is sworn in, he will arrive amid a flurry of new crypto policy work orchestrated by Pham.
Although his interim presidency has lasted less than a year, he made crypto policy a central task of the derivatives watchdog, responding to President Donald Trump’s directives to push for a friendly digital asset policy to make the United States a leading global hub. Similarly, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins has also spent much of his bandwidth on his agency’s program known as Project Crypto.
