Brian Quintenz, US President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), announced his nomination on Farcaster, a Web3 social media platform, in an early sign of the regulatory agency’s warming stance on cryptocurrency.
On Feb. 12, Quintenz — who currently heads policy for the Web3 venture firm a16z Crypto — said he was accepting Trump’s nomination to head the CFTC, the top US financial regulator after the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Quintenz’s Farcaster announcement marks a sharp reversal from US financial regulators’ chilly posture toward crypto under former US President Joe Biden, who stepped down on Jan. 20 when Trump took office.
Under Biden, US financial regulators brought more than 100 lawsuits against crypto firms for perceived legal violations.
The CFTC is “well poised to ensure the USA leads the world in blockchain technology and innovation,” Quintenz said in the Feb. 12 Farcaster post. He also announced the nomination on the X social media platform.
Source: David Hoffman
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Decentralized social media
In 2024, a16z led a $150 million financing round for Farcaster, which has approximately 50,000 daily active users, largely on Warpcast, its most popular client.
Hosted on Ethereum, Farcaster provides a decentralized social media platform on which other applications can build. It is used almost exclusively by the Web3 community.
“DeFi assets should be flying on the Quintenz news,” Matt Hougan, asset manager Bitwise’s chief investment officer, said in a Feb. 12 X post, describing him as an outspoken supporter of decentralized finance (DeFi).
Quintenz still needs to participate in a Senate hearing and win a vote for approval before becoming the CFTC’s chair. If approved, he will replace Rostin Behnam as head of the commission.
In 2021, Quintenz joined the board of Kalshi, a crypto-friendly prediction market that successfully sued the CFTC under the Biden administration for the right to list political betting contracts. He started as a16z’s head of policy in 2022.
The venture capital executive previously worked at the CFTC as a Republican commissioner from August 2017 to September 2021.
In December, Trump nominated Paul Atkins, a former commissioner, to chair the SEC.
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