Thank you, Chairman Atkins, and to your staff for hosting the CFTC today. I want to especially thank Ileana Ciobanu, Phil Raimondi, and Taylor Asher from the SEC, and Abigail from the CFTC, for all their hard work in planning today’s historic event—I think the first SEC-CFTC joint roundtable since Dodd-Frank, almost 15 years ago. I think you’ll agree that’s much too long. Because working together is working better.
It’s a new day. And the turf war is over. Can we take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come under this Administration?
The CFTC and the SEC have a long, rich history of collaboration dating way back to the 1981 Shad-Johnson accord, or as I like to call it, the Johnson-Shad accord. This was named after the two agency chairmen that came together to solve an important jurisdictional issue.
When I was a law student intern in the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement, I took GW Law’s Regulation of Derivatives class with my professor, former CFTC Chairman Philip McBride Johnson—yes, that Johnson. He also literally wrote the textbook on the CFTC and our jurisdiction. I often say that we have to remember where we came from to appreciate where we are going, and I’m pleased we will begin with a panel on that shared SEC-CFTC history. And today’s roundtable is in that same spirit of two agency chairmen coming together to proactively solve jurisdictional issues.
Over the years, our agencies have had many opportunities to work together for our shared market participants and for the benefit of capital markets that remain the envy of the world.
There’s no question that because we both oversee financial markets, the regulatory lanes for our two agencies aren’t always clear or intuitive. At times, this has led to unnecessary friction between the two agencies, and avoidable headaches for the public that depends on us to maintain well-functioning markets. The proven way to resolve these issues is to work together. Unfortunately, in recent years, the SEC and CFTC haven’t always answered that call.
Shortly after being sworn in as a CFTC commissioner in 2022, I partnered with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce in an op-ed calling for greater collaboration between our agencies. We sought joint roundtables like the one we are holding today, or a resurrection of the long-dormant CFTC-SEC Joint Advisory Committee on Emerging Regulatory Issues. Unfortunately, our recommendations for collaboration fell on deaf ears.
In recent years, the dynamic between our agencies could be described as one of competition rather than collaboration. That is not what this Administration wants. It is not what we want. And it’s not the best way to serve the American people who rely on us. So, I’m pleased that our two agencies are once again working together, and working better, for the mutual benefit of our financial markets.
I’m so grateful to have a colleague at the helm of the SEC committed to working in a collaborative manner with the CFTC to ensure we are providing the highest level of service to our markets and the American people. We are aligning regulatory frameworks and rule requirements wherever possible to eliminate excessive and unnecessary costs and supporting responsible innovation and fair competition.
You’ve already seen our agencies hard at work implementing the recommendations of the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets through the SEC’s Project Crypto and the CFTC’s Crypto Sprint. But why stop there? Improved harmonization between our agencies promises to accelerate efficiencies, foster innovation, remove jurisdictional ambiguities, and enhance market access and the freedom to choose for customers and investors.
And that’s what today’s roundtable is about. Imagine, if you will, that you could start over from a blank sheet of paper, that you could come up with a market structure that works best for liquidity—for volume and for flow—and for capital efficiency. I hope that that's what we're beginning to work on with today's roundtable. What is the best, most optimized market structure for market participants, for those users that stand most to benefit from modernization, and most of all, for the investors.
Many of the market structure innovations that we will discuss today have been live in CFTC markets for some time—24/7 or extended trading hours, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and of course, crypto asset markets. I’m proud of the CFTC’s longstanding dual mandate to promote responsible innovation and fair competition, and I commend all the CFTC staff over the decades—and CFTC former chairmen and commissioners, many of whom you will hear from today—who have made this our tradition and our pride.
Because crypto is on the agenda, I’ll go ahead and take this opportunity to dispel some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that has been swirling around the CFTC and its operations lately. Let me share with you some statistics about Commission actions since the beginning of this Administration.
From January 20, 2025 until September 3, 2025, the number of Commission actions, excluding enforcement actions, is 18. Three of those were rule making-related. Six were market oversight and registration matters, and the others were administrative. During that same time, there were 13 enforcement actions, and of course, we had dozens of staff actions under my leadership as Acting Chairman.
Since September 4, 2025 to the present, there has been 11 Commission actions excluding enforcement in just a couple weeks. Five of those were rule making-related matters, three market oversight and registration matters, and the rest administrative. We have had 14 enforcement actions in just the past couple of weeks—again, under my leadership as Acting Chairman. Compare these 14 enforcement actions to the 13 enforcement actions that we had from January 20 to September 3.
As you can see, the Commission has taken almost the same number of regulatory and administrative actions, and more enforcement actions, in about three weeks compared to the over seven months prior. The CFTC is alive and well, and there needs to be no more FUD about what’s happening on the other side of town.
Conclusion
Our financial markets are critical to fueling America’s growers, producers, and innovators that drive our economic growth and prosperity. As regulators, we must do all we can to remove unnecessary drag on our markets that impedes our chances of reaching our full economic potential. Simply by working together, we have an opportunity to bring real value to our markets and those they serve—the American people. I’m looking forward to today’s panels on how we got here, and how we can work together and work better to promote platform innovation and improve opportunities for customers and investors while maintaining safe and resilient markets for all.
