Kristin Johnson, one of five commissioners of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has announced the addition of a CME Group executive director with experience in cryptocurrency to her team as chief counsel.
Johnson said on Thursday that Bruce Fekrat will be her chief counsel at the CFTC beginning June 1. Fekrat spent more than eight years at the CME Group as an executive director and associate general counsel, where he was the primary regulatory counsel for matters such as digital assets.
He regulated cryptocurrency reference rates and assisted in the development of financial products such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) derivatives during his stint at the derivatives marketplace.
Johnson was nominated by US President Joe Biden in September 2021 and sworn in in March 2022, just days after Christy Goldsmith Romero and Summer Mersinger filled the other two vacant CFTC commissioner seats – the federal agency ordinarily has five commissioners on its panel. Johnson also announced that interim senior counsels Lillian Cardona and Natasha Robinson Coates will join her team.
Though former CFTC commissioner Dawn Stump recently said that the CFTC “does not regulate crypto assets even if they are commodities,” having personnel with cryptocurrency experience could have an impact on US digital asset regulation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, CFTC, and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network are currently in charge of digital asset regulation and enforcement in the United States.
However, each agency’s jurisdictional claims are frequently distinct, resulting in a regulatory patchwork approach that many sector leaders have condemned.
During Fekrat’s time at the CME Group, the derivatives exchange issued Bitcoin futures contracts in December 2017 during a bull market, followed by micro Bitcoin futures in May 2021 and micro Ether futures in December 2021.
The company said in March that, subject to regulatory approval, it would begin offering options trading for its mini Bitcoin and Ether futures products.
