CFTC One-Man Show: Four Seats Empty as Crypto Waits on CLARITY Act

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is operating with a single voting member. Chairman Michael Selig sits alone on a panel the Commodity Exchange Act says should have five commissioners, The Currency Analytics reported. The White House has reviewed candidates for all four vacancies, with two slots reserved for Democrats under the law that caps same-party representation at three commissioners. Each nominee needs Senate confirmation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer handed over a list of Democratic candidates earlier this year, though those lists carry no binding weight and can be ignored, the report said.

The last fully staffed commission ran from April 2022 through February 2025 and leaned Democratic. Chairman Rostin Behnam spent much of that period pushing Congress for expanded authority over digital commodities, targeting platforms operating without proper registration. Commissioners Kristin Johnson and Christy Goldsmith Romero kept the focus on consumer protection, retail harm and customer fund safety. Romero was vocal against certain rule changes during the FTX collapse era, making her a lightning rod for the crypto crowd, the article noted.

The two Republican commissioners, Summer Mersinger and Caroline Pham, dissented regularly. Mersinger voted against the Ooki DAO enforcement action, the first-ever CFTC case against a decentralized organization. Her skepticism of aggressive enforcement made her a favorite in crypto circles. The Blockchain Association hired Mersinger in May 2025, not long after she left the commission. Both Mersinger and Pham are gone now, which is part of why the commission is where it is, according to the analysis.

The industry's preferred outcome is Selig plus two Republicans holding the majority, with two Democrat moderates rounding out the panel. Even with that setup, the minority commissioners can slow things down, extended comment periods, formal dissents, requests for additional analysis, but they cannot block a determined majority. The setup is not perfect for crypto firms, but it is workable, the report said.

A more evenly split commission, or one where the Democratic nominees turn out to be enforcement-minded, is a different story. Crypto firms have spent years pushing back against what they saw as an overly aggressive posture from the Democratic majority, and nobody in the industry is eager to revisit that, the article noted.