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SEC, CFTC to push united crypto work now that they both have Trump-appointed heads
The two U.S. markets regulators will have a joint event to highlight their unified crypto agenda, following the arrival of permanent CFTC chief Mike Selig.
Jan 22, 2026, 10:13 p.m.
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What to know:
- The chairmen of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission will hold an event next week to highlight their joint crypto work.
- After CFTC Chairman Mike Selig's recent arrival to lead his agency, the two will talk about how they're working to complete President Donald Trump's directives to create pro-crypto U.S. policy.
It's not a new sentiment that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and its sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are working together to enact President Donald Trump's aggressive pro-crypto agenda. But the CFTC now has a new chief, Mike Selig, and the two agencies will hold a Tuesday event to underline their cooperation.
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SEC Chairman Paul Atkins is no stranger to Selig, having been his boss until Selig's switch to become the CFTC's permanent chairman last month. Selig had been a senior official in the SEC's crypto policy work, and he's now replaced interim chief Caroline Pham to lead the commodities watchdog, where he already announced a new "future-proof" crypto initiative this week.
Atkins and Selig issued a joint statement on Thursday to announce the combined crypto event at the CFTC headquarters in Washington, saying that "market participants have been forced to navigate regulatory boundaries that are unclear in application and misaligned in design, based solely on legacy jurisdictional silos."“This event will build on our broader harmonization efforts to ensure that innovation takes root on American soil, under American law, and in service of American investors, consumers, and economic leadership,” they said.
Atkins and Pham, who is now an executive at crypto firm MoonPay, held a similar call in September to declare the turf wars over between the related agencies. They'd issued a joint statement about harmonization and together hosted a roundtable on prediction markets and decentralized finance (DeFi).
Trump's crypto agenda for the two agencies is ambitious, and both are working on policies and rules to clarify digital assets oversight in the U.S. While their staffs are working on that, Congress is also trying to establish new laws that will govern crypto, including how the SEC and CFTC will handle the markets in these emerging assets.
The event, kicking off at 10 a.m. Eastern, will feature brief introductory statements from each chief before they both participate in a panel discussion.
Read More: SEC, CFTC Chiefs Say Crypto Turf Wars Over as Agencies Move Ahead on Joint Work
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