Kristin Johnson, one in all 5 commissioners at present serving at the US Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee, or CFTC, has introduced {that a} CME Group govt director with expertise in crypto will probably be becoming a member of her workers.

In a Thursday announcement, Johnson said Bruce Fekrat will probably be her chief counsel on the CFTC beginning on June 1. Fekrat labored as an govt director and affiliate normal counsel on the CME Group for greater than eight years, the place he was lead regulatory counsel for points together with digital property. Throughout his time on the derivatives market, he regulated cryptocurrency reference charges and helped within the improvement of economic merchandise together with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) derivatives.

Nominated by U.S. President Joe Biden in September 2021, Johnson was sworn in inside days of each Christy Goldsmith Romero and Summer season Mersinger filling the opposite vacant commissioner seats on the CFTC in March 2022 — the federal government company usually has 5 commissioners in its panel. Along with Fekrat, Johnson introduced Lillian Cardona and Natasha Robinson Coates will be a part of her workers as interim senior counsels.

NEWS: @CFTCjohnson Publicizes Preliminary Workers Appointments. https://t.co/eZhdbPMclo

— CFTC (@CFTC) May 5, 2022

Although former commissioner Daybreak Stump beforehand advised Cointelegraph that the CFTC “doesn’t regulate crypto property even when they’re commodities,” having workers with expertise in cryptocurrencies may probably affect digital asset regulation in the US.

At current, the Securities and Change Fee, Federal Reserve, Treasury Division, CFTC and Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community deal with points coping with digital property in the US, together with regulation and enforcement. Nonetheless, every company usually has completely different jurisdictional claims, leading to a regulatory patchwork method many business leaders have criticized.

Bringing crypto market ‘into the sunshine’ doesn’t deal with enforcement: CFTC chair

DuringFekrat’s tenure on the CME Group, the derivatives market launched Bitcoin futures contracts in December 2017 amid the bull run and later went on to introduce micro Bitcoin futures in Might 2021 and micro Ether futures in December 2021. In March, the group introduced it could launch choices buying and selling for its micro Bitcoin and Ether futures merchandise,topic to regulatory overview.

Cointelegraph reached out to Bruce Fekrat, however didn’t obtain a response on the time of publication.