The Pomp Podcast - CFTC Chair Reveals The Government’s New Plan For Crypto & AI | Mike Selig

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Mike Selig is the 16th Chairman of the CFTC and a leading voice on the future of financial market regulation in an era defined by crypto, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. In this conversation, we discuss how regulators are balancing innovation with investor protection, the evolving relationship between the SEC and CFTC, and why emerging technologies are reshaping how risk is taken and managed across global markets. We also explore the rise of decentralized finance, AI-driven trading, and new policy initiatives aimed at keeping the United States competitive in the next generation of financial infrastructure.======================Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Take out a Figure Crypto-Backed Loan (https://figuremarkets.co/pomp), allowing you to borrow against your BTC, ETH, or SOL with 12-month terms, 8.91% interest rates, and no prepayment penalties. Or check out Democratized Prime (https://figuremarkets.co/pomp) and earn ~8.5% APY on real world assets, paid hourly. Unlock your crypto’s potential today at Figure! https://figuremarkets.co/pomp ======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.======================0:00 - Intro0:59 - SEC & CFTC cooperation & new policy direction3:44 - AI, crypto & prediction markets shaping the future7:49 - Insider information, manipulation & market risks13:23 - Decentralization & regulating on-chain markets17:14 - The rise of AI trading agents21:30 - AI, memes & misinformation in financial markets23:04 - Should regulators be allowed to use crypto?25:00 - Innovation task force & new policy initiatives27:18 - Bridging the gap between lawmakers & builders29:30 - Perpetual futures and new crypto market products31:16 - The role of regulators in managing market risk

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. But I do think that that has been a big disservice to the American people that the regulators, especially in the last administration, who never got to use this

stuff, were trying to kill it here in the United States. So creating a framework where at least regulators can experiment with it, maybe use stable coins, things like that. You know, I think that's something that we should change in the country. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a very special conversation. We have the 16th chairman of the CFTC, Mike Selig, is here to join us. And in this conversation, we're going to talk about the three most important technologies that are facing financial markets. We're going to talk about artificial intelligence, prediction markets, and crypto, and how we are thinking about allowing people to take risk in the market, but also how we can go and make sure that people don't break

the rules. One of the interesting things about regulators is that they have to encourage innovation. They have to encourage the risk-taking, but they also have to make sure that our markets are safe and sound. And Mike's got a very unique view because he used to use these technologies in the private sector before he joined as a regulator. And so he's got a very interesting insight into how they're thinking about this. And I think you're going to be very surprised by the approach that they're taking. Here's my conversation with Mike Sealy. All right, Chairman, I thought a great place to start the conversation is obviously crypto has been in the crosshairs of the SEC, the CFTC. There's been a ton of pressure on the industry

over the last couple of years. It seems like there's been a 180 now. CFTC and SEC not only are working together, but also seem to be trying to encourage innovation in this space. Can you talk a little bit about just the philosophy of these two organizations coming together? And then what do you guys hope to accomplish by providing this tailwind to the industry? Well, for so many years, the agencies have not been able to cooperate, coordinate, work together. And so we've wound up with this patchwork of rules and regulations that are often inconsistent. And we saw with the last administration, Gary Gensler's SEC led a war on crypto. They brought enforcement actions against all sorts of builders and innovative technology companies. And then the CFTC really did nothing about it, just kind of stood on the sidelines. And now Chairman Atkins and I are working together, but we're collaborating, we're coordinating. We've launched Project Crypto as a joint initiative between the agencies, and that's intended to harmonize definitions for crypto.

It's intended to harmonize our guidance, our interpretations, and our regulatory philosophies. And that's really important. So you come into the SEC as a builder, and you might face one sets of rules and regulations and then a different at the CFTC in the past. But today, we're working together to make sure it's consistent, whichever framework you wind up in. It's also important to note that we have a memorandum of understanding now between the agencies. So we're coordinating our staff's efforts. And so you go and deal with one set of staff at an agency, and they're also talking to the other agency to make sure things are consistent.

They were surveilling the markets that are becoming more and more interconnected with new technologies and products and all of that. So it's really important, I think, as a country to make sure that our agencies are working together, have the same guiding philosophies and are really ensuring that our markets are the best in the world. Now, what's interesting is you worked inside the SEC as part of a task force early in the Trump administration, you know, the CFTC chairman. And when I saw the memorandum of understanding, the first thing I thought was like, should these just be the same organization? Like, should you just put them together and have like a regulatory body? Or do you still think that

there's a lot of value to having kind of two different groups that have different sets of rules in different parts of the market to regulate? It's important to have both agencies. So the CFTC is a risk management regulator. We regulate the derivatives markets, which to me are some of the most creative financial instruments in the world. You can have a derivative on just about anything and everything. The SEC is a very focused capital formation regulator. They regulate the public offerings of securities, they regulate those markets in the secondary. And so having the defined roles is really important, but we need to work together, we need to coordinate. I've learned a lot at both agencies, and I think those

learnings are critical in ensuring that we lead as a country, that we have rules that make sense at both agencies, but very defined roles. And I think it's important to keep them that way. Now, there really seems to be a couple of technologies that are all distinct, yet bleeding together. So we have artificial intelligence, we have prediction markets, we have crypto, you know, all of this is very exciting. But how do you look at these technologies? Do you try to fit them all into one set of rules? Or is there like a certain set of rules you guys look at when it comes to artificial intelligence, certain set for prediction markets, certain set for crypto? I think these are some of the most transformative technologies that we've seen.

They're really generational technologies. I'm excited to be at the forefront leading the CFTC to help develop rules for them. And I don't think those rules should be uniform across all these technologies. It's not one size fits all. We need purpose fit rules that make sense, but they also need to be merit neutral. We can't be saying, you know, AI is fine, but crypto is not. Our prediction markets don't make sense, but we like crypto. So we're trying to take an approach of making sure that our rules are consistent, coherent,

rational, but tailored to the technology. And I do think that these technologies really are synergistic. So we've got blockchain rails that are a response to some of the debanking, the Operation Chokepoint 2.0, the tendency of government to take our assets. We saw it with gold in the early days, right? The government was able to confiscate that. And so having the ability to self-custody your assets, engage on chain freely, censorship resistant blockchain rails are terrific. Prediction markets are a response to a lot of the gatekeepers in the media where they were putting out fake polls, fake news reports. You can check that with the ability to put assets at stake, skin in the game, and really take a position on a future outcome.

And then AI and automation in our markets are really critical. I think agents are going to be some of the most effective traders in our markets, but also helping us be more productive as everyday individuals. And compute is a real new commodity that's really exciting to us at the CFTC as well. I want to dig into each one of these technologies a little bit. So let's start maybe with prediction markets. That one's been in the headlines quite a bit. I think your position, and correct me if I'm wrong, is, hey, this should be federally kind of regulated and there should be one set of rules across the country. States obviously have a very different opinion. Some of them have gone after some of the prediction markets, both the companies and the individuals, which I think is a little

concerning to people in the industry. But at the same time, there's then the overlap of like sports gambling? And what is a sports gambling versus prediction? Just maybe talk about like, how are you viewing the market? And kind of what would your desired outcome be here from a regulation standpoint? Derivatives are some of the most creative and interesting financial instruments that we have. They can be offered on virtually any type of underlying asset. Really what you're doing is taking a position on a future outcome in an event or the price of an asset that can be traditional assets like agricultural products, metals, all of that. Crypto now is a new asset class, but also events like sports and politics and geopolitics.

And so it's really important that we have the ability to manage risk, but also speculate on these things. And the United States has always been the most free market country. You know, Ronald Reagan said, if we lose freedom here, we've got no place else. And we need to protect our markets for that reason as well. So having that innovation, I think, is great in our markets. And the Commodity Exchange Act, our authorizing statute, the CFTC, set up a federal regulatory framework for derivatives, for derivatives on all types of commodities. And the definition of

commodity includes all of these things because we don't want gaps in our regulatory framework. It doesn't matter if it's sports or politics or anything else. The prior administration really tried to hold up a lot of these interesting products in sports and politics. And the court said that was arbitrary and capricious. It struck that down. And so now we've got the floodgates open with all these new products. Unfortunately, the prior administration was so busy suing everyone that they didn't put rules in place to regulate this stuff. And so we're moving quickly to get the right investor protections, customer protections, and guardrails around the products and the exchanges. And the exchanges have been great partners in that, setting up their own

insider trading programs and so on and so forth. So we expect these markets to flourish here in the US. We're going to take a free market approach and make sure that we're checking our news media and the fake polls and the hoaxes and all of that here in the United States. When I look on the platforms, the various contracts that they provide, there are some that I think would fall more in like an economic or investor seat. So maybe you can go and speculate on will Tesla beat its delivery number or not for cars, right? And I think that it's taking a macro thing that people are already doing and it's boiling it down and trying to isolate a data point. I don't see a lot of people who are like, hey, there's an issue there. I think there may

be questions as to will that become popular or not, but I think people generally understand that. Then I see markets that are, whether they're mentioned markets or betting on the color of a tie or the length of a conference meeting or something. And those, I think, are where people are like, hey, this feels more gambling than it does kind of financial investment. How do you all from a regulator seat, do you start to try to determine what is inbounds and out of bounds? Or is it more so the contract is the contract structure, we want to regulate that. And then what people are actually speculating on within the contract structure is more for the individual companies to decide. Derivatives are derivatives. So the underlying asset, even if it is the silly

stuff about the tie that Andrew Sorkin gave me a hard time about as well. But the reality is some of this stuff is readily susceptible to manipulation, and the exchanges are the first line of defense. They should not be listing contracts. Under our statute, it's prohibited to list contracts that are readily susceptible to manipulation. The exchanges review these contracts. They self-certify them. We have the ability to reject them. The issue has been, and I don't want to be the guy that regulates by enforcement, that was Gary Gensler, What we want to do is put out clear guidelines and guardrails around this stuff so that the exchanges can do their job. Unfortunately, the lawsuits and all of that really, some of these

things got lost in translation. So we're making sure that the exchanges understand their obligations. We put out guidance a few weeks ago that explains some of that. Certainly, there's differences of opinion and we want to work through that with the exchanges and with different stakeholders. We put out a request for comments on a potential rule proposal in this space. So we're evaluating those comments and making sure we get things right. But the bottom line is, sure, there are contracts that are derivatives contracts that can be manipulated. And maybe they shouldn't be in our markets then because the statute tells us they shouldn't be. Insider trading, all that's prohibited. I mean, a lot of the criticism you get and the concern is just a lack of education.

And we're making sure that we get the right information out there. But certainly, there's disagreements as to what's manipulable, what's not. We're working with the sports leagues. We're working with different stakeholders to get that right. So I recently talked to one of the Robin Hood executives and he was talking about, they don't list mentioned markets. And I'm sure it's because of this kind of manipulation component. If you then go and you say, okay, well, that is manipulation. Well, where does the insider trading kind of rules lie? And one of the things that I find interesting is if you go back to that Tesla example, if you work at, let's say the people providing the windshields and you see that, hey, every time we pump out a bunch more windshields,

somehow Tesla's deliveries are higher. It's almost like indirect knowledge. Or I think there was this example recently of Jeff Bezos going to the Super Bowl, but people knew he wasn't. And people were basically trading on a rumor. You're the expert, right? I have no clue what the rule should be or should not be. And frankly, it gets, I think, kind of a slippery slope if you start trying to regulate rumors versus concrete evidence. And so is there a general framework for people who are actually participating in these markets who, frankly, they may not have general counsels or compliance people, et cetera, they're obviously incentivized to make money. How should they think about when they have inside information in these markets versus not? The exchanges will be reviewing

the contracts, as I mentioned. And my aim for that review is to be consistent with the statute to make sure the exchanges understand their obligations. So when contracts get listed, they're kind of filtered through that initial process of, are these things readily susceptible to manipulation? If they're listed, they shouldn't be. And investors should be able to kind of appreciate that and respect that they're buying something that's not going to be manipulable or easily manipulable rather. But of course, there's always a risk of insider trading manipulation, even if something's not readily susceptible to it. And insider trading is a type of market manipulation or fraud that's prohibited under our statute. But there's a range of kind of

insider information, right? Not all of its material non-public information that's been misappropriated, that's prohibited in our markets. So somebody could obtain insider non-public information that's just because they had access to a facility or saw something. And hedging firms and hedge funds and exchanges and other types of businesses are trading on that information on a regular basis, right? Because they, for example, might have cameras that see what's going on in Walmart parking lot and that sort of thing. That's not the type of insider information that we're concerned about, or I wouldn't call it necessarily insider information. It's just information, right? And our markets are efficient. So that gets priced in very quickly. But when you

take information that you have a duty to, for example, your employer or your sports team or someone else, and you misappropriate that and trade on it, that's illegal. A good example is, you know, the trainer for an athlete, they know someone's got an injury on the team and aren't going to play in a game. So they go and trade on that. They have a duty to the team or to their hospital or whoever as a physician not to trade on that. So we're certainly monitoring for that. That's why we've partnered with the sports leagues to make sure we have access to the right information and we communicate with them on a regular basis. And then we're also making sure that the exchanges have those relationships and are excluding participants

that are likely to be able to trade on inside information. If we now go from prediction markets, let's start bleeding over into crypto. Obviously, somebody is going to launch a decentralized prediction market and they will claim, oh, we can't control it. People are throwing this up, et cetera. That was something that came out of the crypto world from an exchange perspective previously. How do you start to deal maybe not just with prediction markets, but decentralization in general, right? And if you overlay even maybe AI agents with decentralization, it does feel like maybe who you guys can go to for holding someone accountable becomes a little bit harder in a world where these technologies start to get introduced.

Right. And on-chain certainly doesn't mean that regulations don't apply, but there's a range of things, right? You're looking at whether there's an intermediary, whether there's really someone who's an actor, centralized, and kind of the person that would be regulated for the activity. But some of our laws and regulations actually apply regardless of whether there's an intermediary. So certain types of financial instruments like derivatives can't be offered, for example, to retail participants off of regulated exchange. So just because something is on a blockchain doesn't mean it's safe and not subject to our regulation. But that said, I think it's important to create a space for these technologies in our

financial markets. And so we are evaluating things like innovation exemptions to allow for on-chain markets to flourish here in the US, even though some of our statutes really are focused on pushing that onto centralized gatekeepers and exchanges. But it's important to have the right investor protections, have customer protections there. And so even if someone's able to take their assets in self-custody, perhaps we're regulating certain points of the flow of the transaction. institutional infrastructure to crypto-backed loans and real-world asset yield. If you're holding crypto, Figured lets you borrow against it at 8.91% interest with 50% loan-to-value. It gives you liquidity without selling, without triggering taxes, and without stepping out of

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parameters, put the agent kind of in business. When it's autonomous, do you hold the person who gets the economic benefit? Can you not regulate the AI agent? Is it like the model provider? It gets super complicated very quick and I don't expect you to have all the answers, but how are you guys just at least thinking about this right now? Well, it's such groundbreaking technology that we really have to make sure we get it right. I'm concerned that we overregulate and strangle some of the technology here in the United States. And so I'm taking a very much minimum effective dose of regulation approach where we're looking at what's happening in terms of the models and how they're being deployed and used and making sure that we're regulating the actors, the persons that are engaging in the regulated activity and not just software developers, right? The software developers are the ones kind of building the tools, but they're not actually

engaging in the financial transactions or using it to kind of engage in regulated activity. There was a great court case that dealt with actually Uniswap, the decentralized exchange protocol, talking about how, you know, you don't go after Tesla for the self-driving car that is used to rob a bank, right? You're going after the bank robbers. And so we're certainly looking to make sure we're regulating the traders, the persons that are using them. And for example, if you use a software tool to help you engage in trading activity, the

trading activity is still regulated, but you're using a tool just like you're using your personal device or your computer, right? So we're trying to get that regulation right. And there are a lot of considerations as we're doing it. But one area that I find fascinating is these kind of autonomous agents that are engaging in their own trading activity, potentially for their own kind of benefits. So you could put a bunch of funds in a smart contract and let the smart contract kind of run on its own. And that might actually be attached to a very sophisticated AI and it's able to make better predictions on outcomes than anybody else. And that's going to help us generate better data. And so I think we're going to see a lot of competition between these different AI models

on the financial scale, in the prediction markets, in other areas. And that's where I think you see the marriage of blockchain, prediction markets, and AI. And it's really a fascinating place to be for a regulator. It does become even more interesting. I think it's one thing if I create an AI agent, even if it's autonomous, and I say, here's some money, go make me money, right? It's very clear, it's for my economic benefit. I think that now there's a lot of talk of, well, what if the AI agent spins up its own

like sub-agents who then have a wallet who then are like making money for itself as an agent like i mean you can get very meta in this you know quickly um but it does feel like maybe there is you know there's robo advising there's high frequency trading like there are some components that you guys can put here um and it also i think depends on if it's institutional investors who kind of have certain guardrails compliance you know they're they're holding their data all that versus like the retail you know quote-unquote in the mom's basement who like spins this stuff up and is a little bit more like wild, wild west. I don't know.

I don't envy you trying to figure this stuff out. Yeah. And if you think about it, for example, you know, you're an exchange that's regulated by us. Do you allow some of these AIs to participate? So maybe that's like the first line of defense, right? I think I'm hearing is like the exchanges where the prediction markets, other places,

like really that's where you guys think that you can kind of put some rules to the road and limit what people can do so they stay within the rules. Right. And who are we protecting, regulating the software itself? we regulate intermediaries in our markets and registrants. So it's important to make sure we

stick to our mandate as a regulator and not creep into software or into other asset classes that are beyond our scope. But we're certainly thinking about all of that as we're approaching our regulation of, for example, trading advisors. Are they using AI? Well, we regulate the advisors so we can regulate their use of the AI. But to the extent the AI is just operating in the ether, we don't necessarily regulate that. since we're making a habit of talking about all the hardest problems you probably are thinking through on a day-to-day basis, image generation is another one that I think is very weird and unusual. So we have seen the use of memes in the public stock market, not to manipulate the market,

but obviously the roaring kitty, you know, with kind of the lean forward meme, things like that. I think that the world's richest man one time said he'd rather be a meme dealer than he would be a billionaire, easy to say when you're a billionaire. Um, but now if you can easily create images that are not true, right. Or there, you know, some sort of, uh, uh, kind of concocted image that feels again, like, is it malicious? Is it not like how much of it is like intent versus do you have to at some point just say like, Hey, you cannot use AI, you know, generated images if you're an investor or if you're participating in the market, How do you regulate that stuff?

Well, I think the private markets have solutions here. Blockchain technology is a great one, right? If you can timestamp things and make sure there's an identifier for each meme or artificial intelligence generated post, you can verify if it's real or if it's generated by AI, etc. And so I think that's really important. Having these technologies here in the US is critical. A lot of the stuff about this stuff being all hot air and ICOs and scams and this and that. It's completely false. And that's why as regulators, we're working to make sure that the

United States is the crypto capital of the world. And I think it is today. But the technology is really important here in the US. You can't have AI without blockchain. I think blockchain is a key check on that. One thing that I always find fascinating as I've met more people kind of in these different regulatory posts, I always like to ask like, these technologies, it's very hard to regulate them if you don't use them yourself. But there's obviously limitations in your role. And so, like, I don't know what you've been able to disclose in terms of like, do you own crypto? Do you not? Do you use the prediction markets? Do you get like a demo account? And they're like, hey, we actually want you to try to use this stuff. Just talk maybe about the different technologies and like how you think about, you know, using them, but also the fiduciary duties and disclosures you have to make. Well, I'm one of the rare few that got to use it before going into government. So I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole back in 2011 and got to really test the technology. But today, of course, I've divested. We cannot hold digital assets, especially if we're regulating it. So there are some exceptions for certain people, but we're bound by very strict ethics requirements. So I don't own any of the assets today. But of course, our staff, unfortunately, have similarly not been able to participate in these markets. But we've been working to get demos in place and make sure they understand it. But I do think that that has been a big disservice to the American people that the regulators, especially in the last administration, who never got to use this stuff, were trying to kill it here in the United States.

So creating a framework where at least regulars can experiment with it, maybe use stable coins, things like that is very important. It's silly, you can't hold a Crypto Kitty or, you know, Chromie Squiggle or an NFT or that sort of thing, because they view them as financial assets. You know, I think that's something that we should change in the country. I just won the mention market of you saying crypto, kidding, but no, I'm playing. But I do think it could even be like a de minimis amount, right? Like if you go on the prediction market, I don't think anyone's got a problem with $100. I think it's different when, you know, they see politicians or something going and making millions and millions of dollars, right? Then obviously a little bit different severity standpoint. You guys have an innovation task force that you recently announced.

Talk about what this is and kind of what your goal with it is. Well, I was lucky to get to serve at the SEC on the SEC's crypto task force together with Commissioner Peirce, who led up the task force. And I found it to be just an incredible experience and a great initiative within the SEC because you had so many of these technologists, builders, creators, as well as the larger financial institutions who for so many years had no place to go. They'd come in and try to get a meeting with Mr. Gensler and walk out with a subpoena. And that's no longer the case at the SEC, thanks to Commissioner Peirce's vision. And I wanted to do something similar at the CFTC. So we have a little bit of a different take on it. We're going to be focused on crypto, but also prediction markets and AI. Because as I mentioned, I think these all really go hand in hand and they're critical technologies that we have to get the right policy here in the United States for.

So we're announcing that recently here in the United States and looking to get the builders and innovators and financial firms coming into the office to meet with us. We're also going to use the task force to develop purpose fit rules and regulations and policy. So it's both a vehicle for folks to come in and talk to us, but also to work together with the different divisions within the agency who, as I mentioned, they really haven't used crypto technology. We're bringing in some great folks from the outside who have worked at law firms and technologists and data scientists to join this team, but also bringing on some of the staff from within the divisions. We've really got a great group of individuals who are going to lead on this front and develop some purpose-fit rules.

We've also got this innovation advisory committee, which is comprised of some of the leading CEOs at both crypto firms, people like Brian Armstrong, but then also people the traditional large exchanges like Terry Duffy and Jeff Sprecher and Adina Friedman, and then some of the new entrants in prediction markets like Shane Copeland and Tarek Mansour. So it's really a great coalition. And we've also got some great academics and industry groups on the team. And that's going to be, I think, another vehicle to get input from the public and from the outside to make sure we're not just regulating from an ivory tower and telling everyone what to do. We're figuring out what the markets want to do and setting the right rules of the road for them.

I think where maybe some innovation is meeting regulation is on clarity and a lot of stable coin yield stuff, et cetera. And I've heard both sides argument like in pretty in-depth in private meetings. And what I've told both sides is you're both right, right? Like, you know, like they both have a hint of truth to what they're saying and that's why they're digging their heels in. How can regulators serve as a little bit, you know, I think people think of you generally as like a referee almost, but also the regulators that I've talked with in the past who felt

like they really, you know, did a service to the market was like, they also helped to bridge the gap sometimes when you have people on different sides of issues. And, and yeah, you got to be the referee, but you also kind of have to be the mediator a little bit and get these groups to come together. Talk a little bit about that. Well, the regulators are subject matter experts, you know, we spend all day working on the same statute, the Commodity Exchange Act at the CFTC, and then all the rules and regulations that we're constantly developing and have developed over the years. So we're subject matter experts. We really understand how our rules work, how our statute works, how to implement. And then the staff are really narrowly focused. So they might be focused

on a single provision or a single area within our statute. And we provide technical assistance to the Hill. So we're working with the legislators to make sure they get things right. But it's really important that we're at the table and helping to drive policy. So the Hill uses us as a resource, which I think is great. But sometimes people get so lost in the big picture and it really derails things. I think it's important that we remain focused and make sure that we get the right policy in place. So we're glad to be at the table on that. I think some of these issues around yield and so on and so forth, you're losing the real core aim here. We need to make sure that we have future proof legislation in place to protect the industry here in the US. And some of these

little details, things like yield, I'd prefer for that to be worked out with the regulators. You know, we've got great prudential regulators in the OCC and in the FDIC and the Treasury and others. So I'd like to hopefully have legislation that's bigger picture and let the regulators work out some of the details. One area that the crypto folks are very excited about now, I think TradFi is getting more excited is perps and kind of bringing those to the United States. Talk a little bit about where we are on that front. We're getting very close. Everyone loves to talk about perps. But it's really unfortunate that perps have flooded offshore. Around 2017, 2018, these took off. And for some reason, our markets were so averse to it. And I think we're

for the same reason we're concerned about crypto in the early days. But the product's really interesting. It allows for kind of a unique exposure to really any asset class. But we're focused at the CFTC on studying with crypto. I know a lot of other asset classes may not work for and may kind of take liquidity from our traditional markets. So we're going to start with crypto. We're getting very close. The biggest issue with perps has been how do we characterize them under our statute? So the history of our statute is before we had the Dodd-Frank Act, which amended our act under after the financial crisis, we started off with just futures contracts and options. And so it was very clear what a product was, was either an option or

a futures contract. But now we have swaps, which are much broader in their definition. And so there's been questions as to, are these truly contracts for future delivery if there's a perpetual existence? And what we got as a result of this was these long dated futures contracts. So Coinbase and others have launched kind of these quasi perps where it's a 50 year time horizon to settlement. And that looks a little bit like a perp, but it's not perpetual. And so we're going to fix that. We're going to make sure that it's possible to launch perpetuals here in the US, hopefully in the next handful of weeks to a month, hopefully. So we're getting very close. And I think that's going to be a great win for the industry and for the American people. And

we're going to make sure there's the right guardrails around it and all of that. So it's well-regulated. In a weird way, you are like the chief risk officer of the finance industry, right? Like you're supposed to help people take risks, but also make sure that they don't go too crazy or break rules, et cetera. Is that fair? Well, our statute requires us to regulate the markets. And that's what we're going to do. I grew up as a lawyer. That's my former role before entering the private sector. And I very much take that role seriously where I'm looking to the statute. I'm looking to our rules and regulations to make sure that we're fulfilling our mission as an agency and no more. My view is that we need the minimum effective dose of regulation, no more,

no less. We're not going to overregulate and kind of strangle industries or be paternalistic and merit base as we've seen in the past. And that's where I think the concern comes from, hey, this agency is trying to drive my industry offshore. Why is that? That's not our role. Our role as a regulator is to set the rules and then let the markets decide, let people engage in the transactions they want to engage in, use the technologies they want to engage in, just making sure we don't take the risks that our statute requires us to regulate. We're not here to potentially regulate the markets, but we're here to make sure that there are investor protections in place. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking time to do this. We'll do it again in the

future. Thank you.