Trump Picks Caroline Pham To Serve As Acting CFTC Chair

President-elect Donald Trump has selected junior CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham as acting chair of the swaps and derivatives regulator, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The five members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted Monday to confirm Pham as acting chair, said the people, who asked not to be identified since the appointment hadn't yet been publicly announced. Traditionally the commission approves whoever the incoming administration has selected to serve in the acting role.

Spokesmen for Pham and for the CFTC declined to comment.

A permanent CFTC chair has yet to be announced. Pham has been among the contenders for the role. Other candidates for the permanent chairmanship have included Summer Mersinger, the senior Republican at the CFTC and Brian Quintenz, a former Republican CFTC commissioner who now leads policy for a16z Crypto, part of the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital fund.

Pham has been a proponent of providing regulatory clarity for digital asset companies, which the CFTC is poised to potentially play a greater role in regulating. She's floated the idea of using “regulatory sandboxes” as a way to help companies test, for a short period of time, the viability of their products and services under close regulatory supervision but without necessarily going through its full registration and compliance process. 

President Joe Biden nominated Pham as a CFTC commissioner in 2021. She had previously spent more than seven years at Citigroup Inc. 

Pham will take the helm of the agency from Rostin Behnam until a permanent chair is confirmed by the Senate. Behnam has said he plans to step down from the chairman role on Jan. 20 and depart the agency on Feb. 7. 

The CFTC is the primary US watchdog for the roughly $400 trillion swaps market. Behnam was sworn in as chairman in January 2022.