President Donald Trump’s pick to be chairman of the U.S. commodities watchdog, Brian Quintenz, fielded crypto questions more than any other topic at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, and he assured the lawmakers that the agency can walk a middle ground between unhampered innovation and robust consumer safeguards.
Even as Quintenz awaits the Senate Agriculture Committee’s vote on whether to advance his nomination as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Congress is working on market structure legislation that could elevate that agency as the marquee regulator of U.S. crypto activity. Quintenz, a former CFTC commissioner, is no stranger to that sector, having served as venture capital firm a16z’s head of policy.
“I have always viewed market structure legislation as an opportunity to be both pro-customer protection and pro-innovation at the same time,” he told the senators weighing his nomination, which ultimately needs to be approved by the overall Senate before he can take over the commission. He said the bill could “provide the clarity to buildings, entrepreneurs, innovators to develop products” while also ensuring the regulated firms are appropriately protecting the users of those products.
“Congress should create an appropriate market regulatory regime to ensure that this technology’s full promise can be realized, and I am fully prepared to use my experience and expertise to assist in that effort as well in executing any expanded mission should legislation pass into law,” Quintenz said, adding that he’s willing to work under the CFTC’s current powers “to provide clarity of how the agency’s statutory objectives could be successfully leveraged through this technology.”
Quintenz would join a commission that’s being abandoned by commissioners. By statute, the CFTC has five members — with three from the party in power — but the members have left or are in the process of leaving, including Acting Chairman Caroline Pham, who said she’s leaving when Quintenz starts work. The lone Democrat, Kristen Johnson, said she’ll depart “later this year,” leaving some uncertainty about her timing. So Quintenz may serve opposite a single Democrat before eventually working alone for a time, leaving potential legal vulnerability for any unilateral policies.
Some of the Democratic senators noted the Trump administration has been systematically stripping regulatory commissions of their Democratic members — described by Senator Raphael Warnock as “political purges” — and asked Quintenz if he would encourage the White House to fill both sides of the roster.
“The president is the head of the executive, and the president will make his own decisions. Quintenz said. He later added, “I don’t tell the president what to do.”
He granted that the agency may need more funding if it’s assigned the monumental new task as the regulator of digital commodities spot markets, which would include transactions of bitcoin BTC. Quintenz said that new staff would be made more efficient by “a technology-first approach” that makes the employees more efficient.
Quintenz also fielded a number of questions on the prediction markets, another area he’s had direct experience with as a board member of Kalshi, which fought a legal battle with the CFTC over the regulation of event contracts. He defended such event contracts as an appropriate “hedging tool.”
“I believe the Commodity Exchange Act is very clear about the purpose of derivatives markets, the purpose of risk management and price discovery, and that events [contracts] can serve a function in that mandate,” he said.
Read More: Trump to Tap Former CFTC Commissioner, a16z Policy Head Brian Quintenz for CFTC Head