Stuart Alderoty, chief legal officer at Ripple, has heaped praise on Mike Selig, who has emerged as the frontrunner to spearhead the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
“No one is better suited than Mike Selig to harmonize the CFTC and SEC on crypto and more – reducing duplicative regulation and patching fragmentation,” Alderoty said on X.
Selig currently serves as a top official on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CFTC’s sister agency.
He has previously worked for such prominent law firms as Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Perkins Coie.
Turmoil at CFTC
Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that the CFTC is in a state of turmoil. The influential agency, which is responsible for overseeing derivatives and cryptocurrency commodities, is currently managed only by Acting Chair Caroline Pham.
The nomination of Brian Quintenz has stalled due to pushback from the industry. The Winklevoss twins led a pressure campaign against Quintenz due to the 2022 CFTC case against their Gemini exchange.
The popular trading platform was accused of misrepresenting its Bitcoin futures contracts, and Gemini agreed to shell out a $5 million fine to settle the case. The Winklevii claimed that the CFTC was weaponinzing the commodities laws against them.
Pham, a strong deregulation advocate champied by the industry, has gone after the enforcement staff linked to the Gemini case, which has reportedly worsened the moral within the agency.
Quintenz’s nomination is currently in jeopardy, and various alternatives have been considered.
Earlier this week, Politico reported that Selig had emerged as a new frontrunner.
