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CFTC to tap Tyler Winklevoss, other crypto CEOs as first members of innovation panel
Mike Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is settling in with the revamping of a new innovation panel with many crypto names.
Jan 12, 2026, 6:52 p.m.
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What to know:
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of the regulators of digital assets activity in the U.S., is overhauling its advisory panels to make one focused on innovation, and its inaugural members will include crypto CEOs.
- This is one of the opening moves of new CFTC Chairman Mike Selig, who just started at the agency last month.
Mike Selig just landed in his chairman post at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission a few weeks ago, and he's now reconfiguring the agency with a rebuilt innovation committee that will start with a core of crypto insiders, according to a Monday statement.
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His temporary predecessor, former Acting Chairman Caroline Pham, had quickly put together a group of chief executive officers focused on innovative financial technology in her final days at the agency, and Selig — just a month after that council was announced — is using that list of names as "charter members" of the Innovation Advisory Committee. That means the committee's first members will be executives from such crypto firms as Gemini, Kraken, Bitnomial, Crypto.com and Bullish, which is the parent company of CoinDesk.
Apart from well-known crypto executives such as Gemini's Tyler Winklevoss and Kraken's Arjun Sethi, others who'd been announced last month as members of the CEO group included leaders of prediction market firms Polymarket and Kalshi, plus executives from more traditional names such as Nasdaq, CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange and Cboe Global Markets.
"Innovators are harnessing technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud computing to modernize legacy financial systems and build entirely new ones," Selig said in a statement. "Under my leadership, the commission will develop fit-for-purpose market structure regulations for this new frontier of finance."
He said the innovation committee, based on the former Technology Advisory Committee, will help the regulator as it writes those new rules. It becomes one of five such outside committees meant to help guide the agency on areas of the members' expertise.
The agency, which is expected to be one of the leading U.S. regulators of crypto, asks the public to submit further member nominees and suggested topics of consideration by the end of January.
Read More: Senate confirms Trump crypto-friendly nominees to take over CFTC, FDIC
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What to know:
- The crypto industry's campaign-finance arm is flexing with an opening $5 million for a Republican Senate primary election in Alabama as the congressional midterms — still nine months away — begin in earnest.
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- Alabama congressman Barry Moore will receive supportive advertising with this money, and a Fairshake representative said the group has also dedicated funds to back Representative French Hill, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
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