This Commission That Regulates Crypto Could Be Just One Guy: An Industry Lawyer

Republicans in the Senate are racing to confirm a lawyer with a long list of crypto industry clients as the next Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair, a position that will hold wide sway over the industry.

CFTC nominee Mike Selig has served dozens of crypto clients ranging from venture capital firms to a bear-themed blockchain company based in the Cayman Islands, according to ethics records obtained by The Intercept.

Those records show the breadth of potential conflicts of interest for Selig, who, if confirmed, will serve on the CFTC alone due to an exodus of other commissioners.

With a Bitcoin crash wiping out a trillion dollars of value in the past few weeks, the industry is counting on friendly regulators in Washington to give it a boost.

Senate Agriculture Committee members voted 12-11 on party lines in favor of Selig on November 20, setting up a vote in the full Senate. The committee vote came a day after a hearing in which Selig dodged straightforward questions about whether CFTC staffing should be expanded as it takes on a role overseeing digital assets, and whether Donald Trump was right to pardon Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.

One thing Selig was committal on, however, was the danger of over-enforcement — leading the consumer group Better Markets to criticize him as the “wrong choice” to lead the CFTC.

“The CFTC is facing unprecedented strain as crypto and prediction market oversight has been layered into its traditional derivatives market oversight responsibilities,” said Benjamin Schiffrin, the nonprofit group’s director of securities policy. “During his hearing, Mr. Selig showed little interest in regulation on either count and was unable to answer the simplest of questions.”

Friendly to Crypto

Selig has drawn widespread backing from crypto industry groups in the wake of his October 25 nomination, which came after an earlier Trump nominee was derailed by the Winklevoss twins, who sued Mark Zuckerberg over the creation of Facebook before launching a lucrative career in crypto.

Selig’s resume shows why the industry is so comfortable with him. Early in his career he was a law clerk for J. Christopher Giancarlo, the CFTC chair during Trump’s first term who calls himself CryptoDad.

After the CFTC, Selig joined Giancarlo at the white-shoe law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. His client list there extended from major crypto investors to smaller startups, many of them with some presence in the derivatives or commodities worlds, according to a form he filed with the Office of Government Ethics after his nomination.

Selig’s clients included Amir Haleem, the CEO of a crypto company that was the target of a yearslong Securities and Exchange Commission probe; Architect Financial Technologies, which last year announced a CFTC-regulated digital derivatives brokerage; Berachain, the Caymans-based blockchain company whose pseudonymous co-founders include “Smokey the Bera” and “Papa Bear”; CoinList, a crypto exchange that allows traders to access newly listed digital tokens; Deribit, a crypto options exchange; Diamond Standard, which offers commodities products that combine diamonds and the blockchain; Input Output Global, one of the developers of the decentralized blockchain Cardano; and the U.S. branch of eToro, an Israeli crypto trading platform.

At least one of Selig’s former clients, Alluvial Finance, met with staffers of the crypto task force where Selig has served as chief counsel since the start of the second Trump administration, according to SEC records.

Selig’s clients have also included trade groups including the Proof of Stake Alliance, which advocates for friendly tax policies for a type of blockchain, and the Blockchain Association, which represents dozens of investment firms and large crypto companies in Washington.

Pushing back against the idea that Selig was a one-trick pony in a recent podcast interview, Giancarlo said that Selig’s interests extended to other industries overseen by the CFTC such as agriculture.

“Yes, I think the crypto community is excited about Mike. But so is the whole CFTC community,” Giancarlo said. “It’s not, ‘Crypto bro goes to CFTC.’ This is somebody who has had a decadelong practice in all aspects of CFTC law and jurisdiction, and is accomplished in all those areas.”

Revolving Door

It is far from unusual for Republican presidents to tap industry-friendly lawyers to serve as financial regulators. Selig, though, is poised to assume a uniquely powerful position thanks to a more unusual circumstance: an exodus of CFTC commissioners this year.

The commission’s other members fled for the doors since Trump’s second term began, with only a single, crypto-friendly Republican left to serve as acting chair. She has said that she will step down once her replacement is confirmed.

Trump so far has yet to nominate any Democratic commissioners on the body that is typically split 3-2 along party lines, with the majority going to the party that controls the White House.

That appears to have been the sticking point for the Democratic senators who unanimously voted against Selig at the committee vote.

Selig may not have to recuse himself from matters involving his former clients as CFTC chair, it appears. In his government ethics filing, Selig pledged not to involve himself in matters involving his former clients for the standard period of a year after he represented them. However, Selig has been in government service for most of 2025, meaning that there are only a few weeks remaining of that blackout period.

A White House spokesperson did not answer questions about potential conflicts of interest if Selig is confirmed.

“Mike Selig is a highly qualified crypto and industry leader, who will do an excellent job in leading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Trump,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. “We look forward to his swift confirmation.”

Backwater to Bleeding Edge

If confirmed, Selig will lead an agency that was once considered a relative backwater until it was put in charge of regulating derivates after the 2008 financial crash. More recently, Congress advanced legislation that would put the CFTC on the bleeding edge of overseeing digital assets.

Nonetheless, even relatively crypto-friendly Democrats, such as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, noted at the hearing last week that the agency has nowhere near the staff needed to take on a major new role in the financial markets. The CFTC has only 161 employees dedicated to enforcement actions compared to about 1,500 at the SEC, Booker said.

“There is a real problem right now with capacity in the agency that you are up to lead,” Booker told Selig.

Despite the dearth of both commissioners and staff, Selig was unwilling to commit to growing the agency if he is confirmed. Pressed by Democrats whether he would ask Trump for a bigger staff, Selig repeatedly said that he needed to study the issue.

Selig also avoided giving direct answer to questions from Democrats as to whether the CFTC should crack down on the emerging world of “prediction markets” offering sports gambling outside the auspices of state regulation, and whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to “vertically integrate” by investing in the same tokens they allow customers to trade.

Selig did signal a general openness toward cryptocurrencies — and skepticism of regulation — in his statement to the committee.

“I have seen firsthand how regulators, unaware of the real-world impact of their efforts, and zeal for regulation-by-enforcement, can drive businesses offshore and smother entrepreneurs with red tape,” Selig said. “Everyday Americans pay the price for these regulatory failures. If confirmed, I am committed to instituting common sense, principles-based regulations that facilitate well-functioning markets and keep pace with the rapid speed of innovation.”