CFTC Chair Michael Selig On Perps, Prediction Markets & Crypto In The U.S

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rob Haddock** (0:28)
Today, we have a very special episode of the Empire podcast. As you can tell, I'm not Jason Yonowitz. My name is Rob Haddock. I'm a general partner at Dragonfly and a co-host of the weekly Roundup podcast that we do here on Empire.
Today, we have an awesome guest, chairman of the CFTC, Mike Selig. Mike, thank you for coming on the podcast.

**Michael Selig** (0:49)
Thanks for having me.

**Rob Haddock** (0:51)
So Chair Selig has been incredibly effective in his first five months on the job as the 16th chair of the CFTC. Last Friday, he approved the first true Bitcoin perpetual contract on a US regulated exchange. He opened the door for onshore prediction markets, and he's issued guidance on 24-7 trading and clearing.
Before the CFTC, he was the chief counsel of the SEC's Crypto Task Force and a senior advisor to Paul Adkins. He also started his career as a clerk at the CFTC about a decade ago and spent some time in private practice at Wokifar. Today, we're going to dig in to some of those topics, perpetuals, prediction markets, 24-7 clearing, and Chair Selig's approach to regulation.
Chairman, that will jump right into it, so thank you for being here.
So for the first question, I want to set the stage a little bit. You've made some serious pro-innovation headlines since you started. You know, I think everybody in the industry has been really excited about the initial phase of the CFTC in these first six months. You publicly made waves and put out guidance on a few things I just talked about. So, perps, prediction markets, 24-7 trading. You've indicated there's more to come in terms of your harmonization that you're doing with the SEC as well. How much of this did you feel was part of your mandate walking into the role? Versus, you know, how much has it evolved since you've been in the seat? And how have you changed your perspective in those first six months?

**Michael Selig** (2:13)
Well, it's a pleasure to be here with you. And in response to your question, I saw in private practice, as you just suggested, was a partner at Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, representing clients in the technology space, financial market space, many of whom were in the crypto markets. And they were just absolutely pushed out of the country by the last administration. It was regulation by enforcement. It was lawfare. It was a lack of clear guidelines and rules. And under the Trump administration, we're reversing all of that. We're going to do the exact opposite. We're going to regulate through clear rules and regulations. We're not going to have the enforcement division setting policy. We're going to return the enforcement division to its core functions of policing fraud, manipulation, insider trading and other abuses, and not looking for little foot faults and gotchas trying to collect on civil penalties, and really what we want here is a culture of compliance. We want crypto to come into our financial markets and be a player like any other market.
So we're shifting back to our core mandate of market integrity, responsible innovation and fair competition. And part of that, of course, comes from the president. We had a president's working group on digital asset markets report. I was part of that endeavor when I was at the SEC.
And it lays out really the road map, I think, for gold standard markets in the United States that incorporate crypto assets, blockchain and all manner of new technologies. And a core component of that is bringing the purpose markets, perpetual futures markets back to the United States. But another piece of it, of course, is the stable coin initiative. We're well underway implementing genius. And the Clarity Act is really sitting ready to go. We're trying to get that onto the president's desk. So there's a lot going on, but the president's been very clear. We're going to make the United States the crypto capital of the world. I believe it is today. We've ended regulation by enforcement. We've passed genius. We've got Clarity on the way.
And I think it's a new day at the SCC and at the CFTC.

**Rob Haddock** (4:21)
Yeah, well, we'll talk a little bit about Clarity later, but that's obviously on everybody's mind as well.
You recently announced Project Crypto. I think it was last January with Chair Atkins and over at the SCC. And the point was to, or at least the steady point, was to harmonize federal oversight of digital asset markets. Can you talk to us a little bit about how that working relationship is with the SCC and how you think about Division of Labor?