In brief
- Trump sent four nominees to the Senate for the CFTC and SEC, including his first Democratic nominees for either agency.
- Both CFTC nominees worked on the Clarity Act. Levine would replace crypto advocate Hester Peirce at the SEC, while Johnson, whose record includes consumer protection, would take the seat of SEC skeptic Caroline Crenshaw.
- The nominees could replenish agencies shaping crypto policy after the Clarity Act’s collapse, but a Democratic Senate takeover in January leaves little time for confirmation.
President Donald Trump has nominated four people to fill vacancies at the two federal agencies that write crypto rules. The bipartisan slate could reshape the commissions, which have increasingly taken the lead on digital-asset policy after Congress stalled.
The White House said Thursday that it had sent the nominations to the Senate: Nathan Anonick and Matthew Rowland for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Kristin Johnson and Steven Levine for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Each nominee requires Senate confirmation. The slate pairs a Republican and a Democrat at each agency: Anonick and Levine are Republicans, while Rowland and Johnson are Democrats. It is the first time the administration has put forward Democratic nominees for either commission.
The appointments matter because both agencies are depleted. The CFTC, in particular, has been operating with a skeleton crew, with Michael Selig as its only Senate-confirmed member after a wave of departures. It has continued to pursue one of the most aggressive crypto agendas in its history.
Filling the seats would give the commissions a quorum and the staying power to turn proposals into durable rules.
Both CFTC nominees come from the Senate Agriculture Committee, which shares jurisdiction over crypto market structure and will review their nominations. Anonick, a Republican, is legislative counsel to committee Chairman John Boozman and was a lead negotiator on the committee’s portion of the Clarity Act, the crypto market-structure bill that collapsed in the Senate this fall.
Rowland, a Democrat, is a career CFTC attorney detailed to the committee. He also worked on the Clarity Act and an earlier 2024 crypto bill. His enforcement-focused background and party affiliation could bring a dissenting voice to a commission that, under Selig, has leaned firmly toward industry.
At the SEC, whose nominees will be reviewed by the Senate Banking Committee, the picks would replace two commissioners who have played opposing roles in crypto policy. Levine, a Republican, is set to fill the seat of Hester Peirce, the agency’s most prominent crypto advocate and head of its Crypto Task Force.
Levine’s views on digital assets are not well established publicly, making his future votes a key factor in whether the SEC’s crypto-friendly approach continues.
Johnson, a Democrat and former CFTC commissioner, would take the seat of frequent crypto skeptic Caroline Crenshaw. At the CFTC, Johnson focused on digital-asset custody and DeFi, and pressed for stronger customer protections and conflict-of-interest rules.
The timing highlights a shift after the collapse of the Clarity Act, the crypto industry’s marquee market-structure bill, which would have established rules that were more favorable than not for most of crypto.
After the bill failed to advance in the Senate, the SEC and CFTC moved to fill the gap using their own authority, leaving the industry to get its “clarity” from regulators rather than legislators. Fully staffed commissions would cement that dynamic.
The agencies’ efforts have been sweeping. The CFTC has cleared perpetual futures on individual stocks, floated bringing crypto exchanges under federal oversight, and moved to define event contracts as “swaps.” The SEC, meanwhile, rolled out an “innovation exemption” for tokenized stocks, proposed rules that would let investment advisers custody crypto, and issued guidance suggesting that most crypto assets are not securities.
These are the first nominations Trump has sent for the seats in roughly a year, a gap that reflected turbulence around crypto appointments. The administration previously withdrew its nominee for CFTC chair, Brian Quintenz, amid a dispute involving the Winklevoss twins.
The confirmation window is now short. With the Senate expected to come under Democratic control in January, Republicans have only a brief lame-duck period to advance the nominees before the political calculus changes.
