- Mike Selig is the leading candidate to chair the CFTC.
- The former corporate attorney is a longtime ally of the crypto industry.
- The White House officially withdrew the nomination of Trump’s former pick earlier this week.
Mike Selig, chief counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force, has emerged as the leading contender to helm the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
A source familiar with discussions surrounding the CFTC nomination process told DL News they expect Selig’s nomination “to happen any minute.”
And many in the industry are lining up behind him.
“Now leading the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, he’s delivered the most effective regulatory work we’ve seen out of any major regulator,” Evan Weiss, chief operating officer at Alluvial and a former corporate attorney, wrote on X.
“If we want America to be the crypto capital of the world, Mike is the right choice to chair the CFTC.”
Similar plaudits came from several crypto attorneys and lobbyists since Politico first reported the news on Thursday.
It remains to be seen whether that show of support can preempt the behind-the-scenes bickering that recently derailed the nomination of Trump’s former pick, Brian Quintenz.
Quintenz, the head of policy at the crypto arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, received similar acclaim from the crypto industry when he was first nominated in February.
But his nomination was reportedly opposed by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of the Gemini crypto exchange and two of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the industry.
In a bid to salvage his nomination, Quintenz took the remarkable step of publicly sharing screenshots of text messages he said he received from the Winklevoss twins.
In those messages, they complained about a seven-year CFTC investigation targeting Gemini that ended with a $5 million consent order earlier this year.
Quintenz said in the messages that he would commit to a “fair and reasonable review of the matter” as CFTC chair. But he left any “solutions” to a “fully confirmed chair.”
“Our complaint raises serious questions and concerns about the culture of the agency that you are about to chair,” Tyler Winklevoss wrote in response, according to the screenshots.
“Cultural reform, which includes rectifying what happened to us, should be the highest priority. I’d like to understand your thoughts on this and how you plan to align with President Trump and the Administration’s mandate to end the lawfare and make amends for it.”
On X, Quintenz said the texts “make it clear what they were after from me, and what I refused to promise.”
“They completely nuked him,” the source said. “They made a phone call. They were like, ‘This is not going to fly with us.’ And it was a very short trip from there to [Quintenz’s nomination] being killed.”
While the SEC regulates securities such as stocks and bonds, the CFTC is charged with regulating futures for commodities such as oil and wheat.
A so-called market structure bill making its way through Congress would largely hand regulation of the crypto industry to the CFTC.
But the agency has been short-staffed for months. While it typically features one chair and four commissioners, it has been led single-handedly on an interim basis by crypto ally Caroline Pham since September 3.
Crypto ally
Mike Selig, a former partner at corporate law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, has been a vocal supporter of the crypto industry.
Before Trump’s election last November, Selig often decried former SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s approach to crypto as “regulation by enforcement.”
“The election is a week away, BTC just broke $71k and SEC Chair Gensler will soon be cleaning out his office,” he wrote last October.
“It’s time for the SEC to institute a hard fork in its approach to regulating crypto and welcome the builders back to America.”
In March, he was tapped as general counsel for the SEC’s 14-person Crypto Task Force, a group charged with creating bespoke regulations for digital assets.
In addition, he currently serves as Senior Adviser to SEC Chair Paul Atkins, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a landmark July speech, Atkins outlined a deregulatory campaign called “Project Crypto” meant to bring equities markets onchain.
Notably, Cameron Winklevoss praised Project Crypto as “one of the most groundbreaking things I’ve read in a very, very long time,” at an industry conference in New York last month.
Before his stint at Willkie Farr, Selig held positions at Perkins Coie, and the office of former CFTC Chair Christopher Giancarlo, another longtime crypto booster.
An SEC spokesperson declined to comment or make Selig available for an interview, citing the shutdown of the federal government currently roiling the US.
Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.
