Update (May 14 at 6:58 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include comments from the Blockchain Association.
Summer Mersinger, one of four commissioners currently serving at the US financial regulatory body Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will become the next CEO of the digital asset advocacy group the Blockchain Association (BA).
In a May 14 notice, the Blockchain Association said its current CEO, Kristin Smith, would step down for Mersinger on May 16, allowing an interim head of the group to work until the CFTC commissioner assumes the role on June 2. Though her term at the CFTC was expected to last until April 2028, the BA said Mersinger is set to leave the agency on May 30.
The departure of Mersinger, who has served in one of the CFTC’s Republican seats since 2022, opens the way for US President Donald Trump to nominate another member to the financial regulator. Rules require that no more than three commissioners belong to the same political party.
Like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CFTC is one of the significant US financial regulators whose policies impact digital assets. Lawmakers in Congress are currently working to pass a market structure bill to clarify the roles each agency could take in overseeing and regulating crypto.
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New leadership at the Blockchain Association had been expected since Smith announced her departure on April 1 to become the next president of the Solana Policy Institute.
“We didn’t hire a search firm because we knew we were going to know the person who was the right candidate,” the Association president, Marta Belcher, told Cointelegraph on May 14. “It was very important to us that it was someone from the crypto world.”
Some of the biggest crypto firms in the US, including Coinbase, Ripple Labs and Chainlink Labs, are members of the Association. The organization “support[s] a future-forward, pro-innovation national policy and regulatory framework for the crypto economy,” according to its website.
Changing the leadership at a major US financial regulator
A nominee of former US President Joe Biden, Mersinger has called for standardized crypto-related policies and said the CFTC was the “ideal regulator for the cryptocurrency spot market.” Some expected she would lead the regulator following the election of Trump and the departure of then-CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam, but Commissioner Caroline Pham took on the role in an acting capacity in January.
Trump chose former commissioner Brian Quintenz to chair the CFTC in February, but his nomination has not moved through the Senate for a vote in roughly three months. Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero reportedly said she plans to leave the agency once Quintenz is confirmed, potentially giving Trump the chance to nominate three new commissioners to fill the five-seat panel.
Any CFTC commissioner picked by the president needs a majority vote in the Senate to be confirmed for a five-year term or to fill in for a resigning member.
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