SCOOP: White House Considering Atkins for CFTC Chair
- Veronica Irwin
- Apr 19
- 6 min read
Trump admin mulls unprecedented SEC–CFTC power consolidation.
09/21/2025
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One Man, Two Commissions?
Can Paul Atkins chair two federal agencies at the same time?
That’s the question I found myself asking after a series of shocking conversations at the Real-World Asset (RWA) Summit last Wednesday.
There has been chatter about who might lead the agency for weeks now. Just on Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Tyler Williams at Treasury and Mike Selig at SEC are candidates. But in a series of side conversations about the fate of the CFTC, multiple sources told me that the first in line for the gig is none other than sitting SEC Chair Atkins himself. Building on President Trump’s preference for small commissions (there is only one sitting CFTC Commissioner currently, and no plans to change that), a single individual chairing both Commissions has never been tried before. Nobody even knows if it is legal.
We’ve covered the recent drama over the CFTC Chair position in recent weeks, but let me quickly refresh your memory. Brian Quintenz, the (on leave) Head of Policy for a16z Crypto and former CFTC Commissioner, was nominated by Trump in February. But he’s been in limbo ever since. He was scheduled to have a confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee in late July, but the White House asked the committee to hold off — apparently, at the request of the Gemini exchange co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Quintenz, despite his typical composure and tendency to be tight-lipped, posted texts between himself and Tyler Winklevoss on X last week, which suggested that Winklevoss expected some promise of friendly treatment from the CFTC.
Quintenz did not respond to a request for comment. I tried to ask Cameron Winklevoss about this after he spoke at the RWA Summit, but he told me to email the same PR representative who’s been ghosting me for weeks (Hey Natalie, call me!).
But here’s what matters most for readers of this newsletter: the CFTC is important to crypto because it regulates futures, including crypto perpetuals, DCMs, and prediction markets like Polymarket. And it could become even more important. Should a market structure bill ever make it to the president’s desk, the CFTC could, in an instant, become the primary regulator of all spot crypto markets. That means that whoever takes the helm could be the most important regulator for the entire industry by the end of this year.
How Could It Actually Work?
Back to Atkins — the rumors I heard at the RWA Summit seem to have teeth. Two sources who speak with Atkins regularly told me it was possible, and that Atkins would be game for the job. That includes one of the people who confirmed for me that Atkins had been selected for SEC Chair, back when I broke that news ahead of the President’s announcement in December.
The question is whether, at CFTC, he’d be the official chair, or shadow chair.
It’s not new for this administration to put the same person at the head of multiple agencies. Take Russ Vought, who is currently acting chair of the CFPB and OMB, or Marco Rubio, who is Secretary of State and Acting National Security Adviser. Even Scott Bessent, best known as Secretary of the Treasury, is also the Acting IRS Commissioner. If you’re unfamiliar, the term “Acting” is used to apply to someone who is directly appointed to the role by the President, without Senate confirmation, for an ostensibly short period of time.
But these roles are each distinctly different than the CFTC. That’s because they are subject to the Vacancies Act, while the CFTC, as a (normally) multi-member agency, is exempted to it.
The only argument by which Atkins could be appointed, without Senate confirmation, to be an Acting Chair of the CFTC is that in which the administration argued they had power to do so under Article II of the Constitution, which establishes powers vested in the President. But no court has accepted this claim yet, despite the White House’s attempts.
Of course there is also the possibility that Atkins could be confirmed by the Senate to the CFTC Chair, in addition to his current role. Anne Joseph O’Connell, a law professor and administrative law researcher at the Stanford Law School, told me this seemed more likely, though there’s still a hiccup: the Securities Exchange Act of 19341 bars any SEC commissioner from holding any other business, vocation, or employment. While being a CFTC Chair probably sounds like a job to most of us, whether it technically fills the definition of another “business, vocation, or employment” is, apparently, debatable.
“It is not clear whether he could be both a confirmed member of the Securities Exchange commission and a confirmed member at the CFTC because there is this [SEC statute] that says no SEC Commissioner can engage in other employment,” says O’Connell. “I think there would be a strong argument that he cannot do that, but it’s not crystal clear.”
But regardless, there are ethical qualms here. Professor Nick Bednar at the University of Minnesota Law School voiced an issue numerous sources I spoke with agreed to. “As a policy matter, the Trump administration's efforts to consolidate power over multiple agencies in a handful of officials is worrying. Each official only has so much time and spreading their attention across multiple agencies makes it harder to ensure proper management within a given agency. The centralization of control comes with a significant cost to administrative capacity and good governance,” he said.
Shadow Chairs and Loyal Lieutenants
There is also, O’Connell points out, a third option here: one in which Atkins could, “through various channels, let it be known what he thinks the CFTC should do and the CFTC does what he thinks should be done, but it is still the CFTC confirmed people who are signing off on the decisions. I don’t think that’s ideal for accountability, but I think that’s probably okay.”
Several people close to the CFTC and the White House told me the Trump administration is looking into this, too. The aforementioned Mike Selig and Tyler Williams might fit the bill. Each are considered loyal to the Trump administration’s crypto goals and knowledgeable about crypto technology, while one of them, Selig, has already been reporting directly to Atkins for the past seven months. However, two former CFTC employees took issue with their slim experience with CFTC-specific rules and mandates.
Selig is currently the Crypto Task Force’s Chief Counsel and Atkins’ Senior Advisor. Before that, he was part of the crypto practice at Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, and interned at the CFTC. Under the Biden administration Selig was an articulate critic of the SEC’s policy of “regulation by enforcement,” outlining a series of policies in an oped for CoinDesk that have since been adopted by Atkins’ SEC.
Williams, meanwhile, was the main architect of the presidential Working Group’s crypto report, a behemoth 160-page document which laid out, in detail, the administration’s perspective on nearly every policy issue in crypto. Sure, the former crypto advisory council lead Bo Hines, as well as the heads of several agencies were involved on paper, but as I wrote for Project Glitch in July, Williams was in the driver’s seat. He also met with numerous industry representatives, from private lobbyists to entrepreneurs to general counsels and DeFi advocates, over nearly seven months he was putting the report together, building rapport with industry players big and small. But as critics keenly point out: no matter how much studying he’s done since January, he hasn’t spent any time at the CFTC.
The Quintenz Nomination Implodes
The subtext here, of course, is that Quintenz is out, even though the White House has not publicly rescinded his nomination. Maybe Quintenz, who people always say is motivated by a strong sense of ethics, was clearing his name more than saving his nomination when he tweeted his texts with Tyler Winklevoss. I’ve heard several people who know him speculate as much, but couldn’t find anyone who’s spoken to him about it directly.
In the end, nobody seems to think Trump really cares that much about the CFTC, which has historically received less attention than the 3,500-head-larger2 SEC, but he cares about crypto. He cares about keeping the support of the crypto industry even more, and his family is deeply involved in the industry on the business side, so keeping crypto-friendly regulators aligned, rather than in competition, is a likely goal. Due to discord over Quintenz amongst donors like the Winklevoss twins, he isn’t seen as fit to that vision anymore.
But Atkins, as either the CFTC’s formal head or shadow leader, does.
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The SEC has about 4200 full-time employees, while the CFTC has only 636, just to put their relative sizes in perspective.
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