KEY POINTS
- The White House sent four nominees to the Senate, one Republican and one Democrat for each of the SEC and the CFTC.
- It is the first time the administration has put forward Democrats for either commission.
- Republicans have a short lame-duck period to confirm the slate before the Senate is expected to turn Democratic in January.
President Donald Trump has nominated four people to vacant seats on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the two agencies that now carry much of U.S. crypto policy. Decrypt reported that the White House sent the names to the Senate on Thursday.
The CFTC nominees are Nathan Anonick, a Republican, and Matthew Rowland, a Democrat. For the SEC, the picks are Steven Levine, a Republican, and Kristin Johnson, a Democrat. All four need Senate confirmation, and this is the first time the administration has proposed Democrats for either commission.
The vacancies have left both bodies thin. According to Decrypt, the CFTC has Michael Selig as its only Senate-confirmed member after a series of departures, even while it pursues an ambitious crypto agenda. Filling the empty seats would give the commissions a quorum and a firmer base for turning proposals into lasting rules.
Both CFTC nominees work for the Senate Agriculture Committee, which will review them. Anonick is legislative counsel to Chairman John Boozman and helped negotiate that committee's share of the Clarity Act, the market-structure bill that failed in the Senate this fall. Rowland is a career CFTC attorney detailed to the committee, who also worked on the Clarity Act and on a 2024 crypto bill. Decrypt noted that his enforcement background could add a dissenting voice to a commission that has leaned pro-industry under Selig.
At the SEC, whose nominees go before the Senate Banking Committee, Levine would take the seat held by Hester Peirce, the leading crypto advocate at the agency and head of its Crypto Task Force. Decrypt said Levine's views on digital assets are not well known publicly, which makes his future votes an open question for the agency's crypto-friendly direction.
Johnson, a former CFTC commissioner, would replace Caroline Crenshaw, who has often been skeptical of crypto. During her time at the CFTC, Johnson focused on digital-asset custody and decentralized finance and pushed for stronger customer protections and conflict-of-interest rules.
The nominations follow the collapse of the Clarity Act, after which both agencies have used their own authority to set the rules. The CFTC has cleared perpetual futures on individual stocks, floated federal oversight of crypto exchanges and moved to classify event contracts as swaps. The SEC has introduced an innovation exemption for tokenized stocks, proposed rules allowing investment advisers to hold crypto, and issued guidance suggesting most crypto assets are not securities.
These are the first nominations Trump has sent for these seats in about a year, a gap Decrypt linked to turbulence over crypto appointments, including the withdrawal of CFTC chair nominee Brian Quintenz amid a dispute involving the Winklevoss twins. Time is also short: with the Senate heading toward Democratic control in January, Republicans have only a brief lame-duck session to advance the slate.
