Law & Policy

Head of Policy, @a16zcrypto  I  Ex-CFTC Commissioner  I  Financial freedom advocate  I  Outdoor enthusiast  I  Proud Father and American  I  Personal account

🚨President Donald Trump has now nominated @brianquintenz to lead the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC). Let’s talk about it… 🧵

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Regulation analyst and researcher. Have a background in politics and competition economics. Decentralise.

While I may disagree on most of Quintenz’s Republican politics, his visions for the regulation of crypto can be set aside from this dispute.  From reading to some of Quintenz’s work for a16z, his priorities for regulation look promising

Quintenz understands the need for increased healthy competition, this is truly such an important economic driver and in a space like crypto where there can be such a range of applications and systems – huge growth potential

He has also pushed for better regulatory transparency in decision-making and increased engagement with industry. These should always be bread and butter for regulators. The transparency element us important in crypto, as I have said before we in the community must always hold the establishment to account on how they interact with crypto and check them if they enforce too much oversight and centralisation

Lastly Quintenz has advocated for specialised crypto training for government employees – a seemingly obvious step that is yet to come to fruition but crucial. Overall, Quintenz is an appointment to be excited about - he values regulation and has a clear, industry-aligned vision. I hope him and Peirce at the SEC can collaborate to get the best for crypto regulation in the US

Quintenz has been the policy lead at @a16zcrypto since his stint as a CFTC commissioner under the last Trump admin – but he was interestingly first nominated by Obama in 2016. Quintenz is undoubtedly fit for the task and I think can do a good job of promoting a bipartisan approach to crypto regulation/legislation

Will be interesting to see how he handles the split of responsibilities between the CFTC and the SEC and where the handoffs will occur. 

Some emerging digital assets are obviously in the CFTC remit. Others not so much. Many DAs will have multiple characteristics that prevent easy characterisation.