Trump Sends Four SEC and CFTC Nominees to the Senate, Including Hester Peirce's Successor

President Donald Trump has sent four nominees to the Senate to fill empty seats at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the two agencies that do most of the work of policing crypto in the United States.

The White House posted the nominations on Thursday, November 12. CoinDesk noted it is the first time Trump has named commissioners to either agency since 2025, and The Block called them the first such nominations in roughly a year.

The list includes a successor for Hester Peirce, the SEC commissioner who led the agency's Crypto Task Force, and two Senate Agriculture Committee staffers who helped write the Clarity Act. It is also bipartisan, which is new for this administration.

Who Trump nominated

For the SEC, Trump picked Republican Steven Levine and Democrat Kristin N. Johnson. According to the White House notice, Levine would take Peirce's seat for a term expiring June 5, 2030, while Johnson would fill the seat formerly held by Caroline A. Crenshaw, with a term running to June 5, 2029.

For the CFTC, the nominees are Republican Nathan Anonick and Democrat Matthew Rowland. Anonick's term would run to June 19, 2031, in the seat once held by Rostin Behnam. Rowland would serve the remainder of a term expiring April 13, 2028, replacing Summer K. Mersinger.

All four need Senate confirmation. The Senate Banking Committee will consider the SEC picks and the Senate Agriculture Committee the CFTC picks before the full chamber votes, according to The Block and CoinDesk.

Who the nominees are

Levine most recently served as general counsel and a senior adviser at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, The Block reported. Before that, he worked at the SEC as counsel and deputy chief of staff to Commissioner Mark Uyeda.

Cointelegraph pointed out that Levine's views on crypto regulation are far less publicly established than Peirce's. That matters, because Peirce was one of the agency's loudest voices for clearer crypto rules and helped Chairman Paul Atkins with his Project Crypto agenda.

Johnson is a familiar name in crypto policy. She served as a CFTC commissioner after President Joe Biden appointed her in 2022, according to The Hill and Reuters. Cointelegraph said she pushed for stronger customer protections and conflict-of-interest rules for crypto firms during her time at the CFTC.

The Block added that Johnson has spoken often about the need for rules around crypto custody, DeFi and AI.

The two CFTC picks come straight out of the Clarity Act fight. Anonick is legislative counsel to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman and was a lead negotiator on the committee's portion of the bill, The Block reported.

Rowland is a CFTC attorney detailed to the Agriculture Committee who also worked on the Clarity Act and the committee's 2024 crypto bill. CoinDesk noted that he previously served on Johnson's staff at the CFTC.

Why it matters for crypto

Both agencies are running on skeleton crews. The SEC has only two of its five commissioner seats filled, Chairman Atkins and Commissioner Uyeda, after Peirce left in October, Cointelegraph reported. At the CFTC, Chairman Mike Selig is the only member of a five-seat commission.

That thin bench has been carrying crypto policy on its own. After the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act in a 49-50 vote in September, Decrypt reported, the SEC and CFTC pressed ahead with their own initiatives.

Those moves included an SEC "innovation exemption" for tokenized stocks, proposed SEC rules on how advisers and funds can custody crypto, and a CFTC plan to bring crypto exchanges under federal oversight, according to Decrypt.

The industry's argument is that a fuller, bipartisan bench makes those rules more likely to last. Ji Kim, chief executive of the Crypto Council for Innovation, said on X that strong, bipartisan representation is essential to building durable rules that safeguard markets, protect consumers and support innovation, The Block reported.

"Both the CFTC and SEC will continue to play central and consequential roles in our financial markets, and together these nominees bring a wealth of experience and expertise that will help ensure continued American leadership," Kim wrote.

Selig welcomed his would-be colleagues as well, calling Anonick and Rowland "two strong bipartisan picks" in a post on X, as quoted by Reuters.

A rare bipartisan move, and a ticking clock

The Democratic picks are what stand out. CoinDesk said the move is unusual because Trump has so far sought to remove Democrats from commissions and had not nominated any Democrats to the SEC or CFTC until now.

The timing is notable. Reuters noted that the nominations come as Trump's Republican Party is set to lose control of the Senate in January after last week's midterm defeat, a result we looked at when crypto's biggest election bets sank in the blue wave.

Cointelegraph described the weeks before Democrats take over as a narrow window for Republicans to confirm Trump's picks. The Senate is currently in its lame-duck session, CoinDesk said.

That window is short. House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill said in October that the Senate would have only 22 days in session between the midterms and the start of the new Congress in 2027, Cointelegraph reported at the time.

What happens next

The next step is committee hearings. Banking will take up Johnson and Levine, Agriculture will take up Anonick and Rowland, and only then can the nominations reach the Senate floor, where confirmation needs a simple majority.

The same lame-duck calendar is also the last chance this Congress has to revive market structure legislation. Hill, who wrote the Clarity Act that cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May, told Fox Business in October that he still hoped it could pass before the new Congress arrives.

"We need that permanent law change to make sure America is number one in digital assets and blockchain technology," Hill said, as quoted by Decrypt and Cointelegraph.

For now, traders have more immediate problems. Bitcoin fell below $70,000 early Friday, its lowest level since August 19, as the Dollar Index held at 19-month highs, CoinDesk reported, extending the slide we covered when bitcoin hit a three-month low on Thursday.

But the people sitting on these two commissions will shape crypto rules long after this selloff is over. The dates to watch are the Banking and Agriculture committee hearings, and whether the Senate can fit four confirmations into a calendar that runs out in January.