U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair Rostin Behnam will resign on Jan. 20, the day Donald Trump is scheduled to be sworn in as president.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Behnam confirmed his departure, which will allow Trump to appoint a successor aligned with his deregulatory agenda.
The U.S. derivatives regulator did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.
Trump is expected to appoint one of the CFTC’s Republican commissioners, Summer Mersinger or Caroline Pham, as acting chair.
A permanent chair will require Senate confirmation, and Trump’s transition team is reportedly considering external candidates as well.
Behnam, who has served as a CFTC commissioner since 2017, became acting chair in 2021 and was later appointed permanently.
Before joining the CFTC, he worked as a senior counsel to Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Under Behnam’s leadership, the CFTC was viewed as less adversarial toward the cryptocurrency industry compared to the stricter approach of Gary Gensler, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
However, the CFTC’s enforcement actions included a high-profile case against crypto exchange Binance for anti-money laundering violations, resulting in one of the largest corporate penalties in history and the departure of its CEO, Changpeng Zhao.
Trump has chosen Washington lawyer Paul Atkins, known for his crypto-friendly stance, as the next SEC chief.
Behnam emphasized to the Financial Times that regulatory gaps in the crypto industry persist, stating, “You still have a large swath of the digital asset space unregulated in the U.S. regulatory system, and it’s important… that we fill this gap.”
He added that the CFTC is “well positioned to be a spot regulator for digital commodity assets.”