The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has established a new CEO Innovation Council, incorporating a mix of blockchain industry executives and leaders from traditional finance.
Council Focus and Participants
The CEO Innovation Council will focus on discussing market structure developments related to the derivatives markets overseen by the CFTC. The primary discussion topics will include:
- Tokenization
- Crypto assets
- 24/7 trading
- Perpetual contracts
- Prediction markets
- Blockchain market infrastructure
Participants include CEOs from various crypto exchanges and prediction markets such as Kraken, Gemini, Polymarket, Kalshi, Bitnomial, Crypto.com, and Bullish. They will be joined by counterparts from major traditional exchanges, including the CME Group, Cboe Global Markets, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange, and the London Stock Exchange Group.
Acting CFTC Chairman Caroline Pham stated that the new council builds upon the success of the previous CFTC Crypto CEO Forum and the SEC-CFTC Joint Roundtable.
CFTC’s Engagement with Crypto
This latest initiative follows Pham’s recent announcement of a crypto collateral derivatives market pilot program. Under Pham’s leadership, the CFTC has signaled its openness to actively engaging with the crypto market and establishing clear guidelines for the sector, a task that has often been more challenging for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Earlier this year, the CFTC also introduced the Crypto CEO Forum, which included CEOs from major firms like Coinbase, Circle, and Ripple. Pham previously pledged to “deliver on the Trump Administration’s promise of ensuring that America leads the way on economic opportunity”.
