The CFTC's Technology Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting on Thursday, August 20, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. A Federal Register notice on August 7 stated that committee members will meet in person in Washington, D.C., with a virtual participation option for the public, which will be broadcast live on the agency's website.
Committee Chair Michael S. Selig, who oversees its work, released the agenda on August 13: crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. "I look forward to meeting with the entrepreneurs, thinkers, and creators of the CFTC's Technology Advisory Committee to discuss how new technologies and financial products are shaping our markets," Selig said. Michael Passalacqua serves as the designated federal official.
This body is not entirely new, but rather renamed. Selig established the IAC in January by renaming it from the Technology Advisory Committee, stating his intention to appoint members of the agency's CEO Innovation Council as its founding members, and invited the public to submit nominations until January 31. A list of 35 members was announced on February 12.
Seven of them operate sports event contract trading platforms or sportsbooks competing with them. The committee includes Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi, and Shane Coplin, CEO of Polymarket. Also included are Jason Robins from DraftKings, Fanduel President Christian Genetski, Vlad Tenev from Robinhood, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, and Luke Hoersten from Bitnomial.
The cryptocurrency group is even broader: it includes Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, Hayden Adams from Uniswap Labs, Brad Garlinghouse from Ripple, Tyler Winklevoss from Gemini, Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Seti, Anatoly Yakovenko from Solana Labs, and Sergey Nazarov from Chainlink Labs, as well as executives from CME Group, Nasdaq, Cboe, Intercontinental Exchange, and Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, and investors including Chris Dixon from a16z crypto and Alana Palmedo from Paradigm.
The Commission has filed lawsuits in nine states regarding prediction markets and has submitted amicus briefs in the Sixth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals, as well as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, defending its jurisdiction over products sold by its committee members. Inevitably, these industry participants are not always on the same side: in June, Polymarket accused Kalshi of corporate espionage, while DraftKings and FanDuel have taken on market maker roles on prediction platforms, even though their sportsbook divisions compete with these companies.
This meeting also takes place amid a two-week surge of regulatory activity targeting the same companies. On August 12, the Market Supervision Division issued guidance on self-certification programs for market makers, liquidity provision, trading, and incentive programs, citing an increase in filings related to sports event-based products where staff found procedural or substantive deficiencies, and giving exchanges until September 14 to amend already filed programs.
In June, the commission proposed a framework to determine when event contracts are contrary to the public interest, including defining the concept of "gambling." Notably, the agency describes the committee as a body created to advise the Commission and provide analytical findings and recommendations, with no authority beyond that scope; nevertheless, it will be able to formally record the positions of major industry players on some complex issues.
