Crypto CEOs Join U.S. CFTC’s Innovation Council to Steer Market Developments

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The chief executives of firms such as Gemini and Kraken will pitch in on U.S. policy efforts through the council’s future, public discussions.

By Jesse Hamilton|Edited by Nikhilesh De

Updated Dec 10, 2025, 10:27 p.m. Published Dec 10, 2025, 10:22 p.m.

CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline Pham speaks at SEC (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

In her final days atop the agency, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Acting Chairman Caroline Pham announced her CEO Innovation Council, replete with crypto executives.
The names include the chief executives from Gemini, Kraken, Polymarket, Bitnomial and several others.
The CFTC is expected to get its permanent chairman very soon when the Senate votes on the confirmation of Mike Selig, President Donald Trump’s nominee.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has announced the initial names as it stands up its CEO Innovation Council meant to delve into derivatives market-structure developments, especially around tokenization, crypto and blockchain technology.

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Prominent crypto-sector CEO names such as Gemini’s Tyler Winklevoss, Kraken’s Arjun Sethi and Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan will join chief executives from such mainstay firms as CME Group, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange and Cboe Group.

“I am grateful to the CEOs who have agreed to share their vision and experience with the commission as we hit the ground running to prepare for the future and beyond,” said CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline Pham, in a statement. She said the group — whose names were gathered rapidly in a two-week period — will be “specifically focused on market structure developments in derivatives markets such as tokenization, crypto assets, 24/7 trading, perpetual contracts, prediction markets and blockchain market infrastructure.”

The complete list for the incoming council is:

Shayne Coplan, CEO, Polymarket
Craig Donohue, CEO, Cboe Global Markets
Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO, CME Group
Tom Farley, CEO, Bullish
Adena Friedman, Chair and CEO, Nasdaq
Luke Hoersten, CEO, Bitnomial
Tarek Mansour, CEO, Kalshi
Kris Marszalek, CEO, Crypto.com
David Schwimmer, CEO, LSEG
Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO, Kraken
Jeff Sprecher, CEO, Intercontinental Exchange
Tyler Winklevoss, CEO, Gemini

Bullish is CoinDesk’s parent company.

The CEO group’s formation is the latest in a rapid-fire series of crypto developments from the CFTC and Pham. The interim chair is moving quickly to finish up the final priorities of her own crypto agenda. This week, the agency announced a pilot program for using crypto collateral in the derivatives market, which followed days after Pham’s announcement that Bitnomial (whose CEO is on the council) had kicked off leverage spot crypto trading she’d personally encouraged as acceptable under U.S. derivatives laws.

These are expected to be the final days of her leadership tenure at the agency, with President Donald Trump’s chairman nominee, Mike Selig, expected to be confirmed as soon as Wednesday by the Senate. Once he’s sworn in, he’ll arrive amid the deluge of new crypto policy work orchestrated by Pham.

Though her interim chairmanship has been less than a year, she made crypto policy a central task of the derivatives watchdog, responding to President Donald Trump‘s directives to push friendly digital asset policy to make the U.S. a leading global hub. Similarly, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, Paul Atkins, has also spent much of his bandwidth on his agency’s program known as Project Crypto.

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