CFTC’s Caroline Pham Vows Tough Crypto Oversight Despite Trump Support

• Acting CFTC Chair  Caroline Pham believes the Biden administration overstepped and ignored the laws in pursuit of “novel” enforcement actions.
• Pham has plans to move into the private sector once Brian Quintenz is officially sworn in.
• Fresh crypto and stablecoin legislation proposals are making their way through the halls of Congress and could pass in the coming months.

With Donald Trump’s pro-crypto administration taking over Washington, the U.S. government is reversing years of harsh regulatory oversight and obscurity with hopes of unlocking the nation’s Web3 industry.

However, that doesn’t mean it’ll be an easy ride for the digital assets sector, at least according to Caroline Pham, acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who has advocated for mainstream crypto adoption.

No Free Ride

Speaking at the Coinbase Annual Summit on June 12, Pham made it clear that the Trump administration’s “pro-innovation and pro-growth” approach does not mean that crypto firms can start breaking the law.

She explains that their approach isn’t about twisting the law to criminalize certain assets or technologies but more about catching the liars, fraudsters, and thieves among industry participants.

Notably, she’s pleased that agencies have been able to end “regulation by enforcement” and shift their attention and resources towards catching scammers and fraudsters.

Instead, she’d prefer to see crypto become “so big, so accepted,” and a part of our daily lives that the public, the voters, won’t let the politicians take it away.

Crypto Enforcement

Pham acknowledges that under President Joe Biden’s administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and CFTC often overstepped the boundaries of “what the law and what the statute says.”

Many of her dissents against these enforcement actions highlighted that they were reinterpreting existing laws, ones that have applied to major financial products and assets for decades in the traditional markets.

“So, when we start to change the rules for the 700 trillion notional global derivatives markets, because we’re trying to be creative and flex it to go after what we perceive to be a ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ blockchain, that is really breaking the fabric of our global markets,” Pham said.

Pham reiterates that the previous administration ignored these existing rules and guidance to pursue “novel enforcement theories” without a care for the unintended consequences that would follow on the global markets.

Now, with the halls of Congress bustling with several crypto bills, namely the stablecoin-focused GENIUS and STABLE Acts, as well as the CLARITY Act, there are hopes that the U.S. will now become the most attractive location for Web3 firms.