CFTC’s Goldsmith Romero says commissioner exodus ‘not a great situation’
Outgoing US Commodity Futures Trading Commission commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero says the exodus of the agency’s top brass is “not a great situation” for crypto regulations.
The CFTC could be headed by just one commissioner once the other four depart later this year, which Goldsmith Romero said in a May 27 interview at the Brookings Institution will make creating regulations harder because it leaves a less diverse pool of opinions.
“I think it’s not a great situation if you have one person who’s determining what the rules should be; you lose the benefit of this back-and-forth, this push-and-pull as to what’s the right thing to do,” she said.
“I’ve always wanted to hear from my fellow commissioners about what makes sense to them, and there are many things that they’ve convinced me of and many things that I’ve convinced them of, so I think it does a disservice to regulation.”
Goldsmith Romero’s last day will be May 31, leaving Commissioner Kristin Johnson as the CFTC’s sole Democrat, who has also announced plans to depart the agency before 2026.
Republican Commissioner Summer Mersinger is also leaving on May 30 to join the crypto advocacy organization the Blockchain Association as CEO and Republican acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham said on May 15 that she plans to move “to the private sector” if Brian Quintenz were to be confirmed head of the agency.
If Quintenz is confirmed, and Pham follows through on leaving, it would leave him solely in charge of the agency. Five commissioners are supposed to make up the CFTC, and no more than three can be from the same political party.
Goldsmith Romero said that during her tenure, all the commissioners had different perspectives and experiences that, when brought together, were “really helpful.”
“So what happens if the CFTC gets down to one and gets new authority for crypto? It’s going to be really, really hard; you’re not going to have the same push and pull,” she said.
The Trump administration has floated the idea of handing the reins of crypto regulation to the CFTC in the past. Congressional Republicans have also been drafting bills to give the CFTC greater oversight over the industry,
Retail customer Definition should be CFTC priority
In the future, Goldsmith Romero thinks the CFTC should work on defining a retail customer to ensure the influx of fresh investments in “crypto and some other products” has a similar retail customer protection regime to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Related: Crypto perp futures coming ‘very soon,’ says CFTC’s Mersinger
“I came from the SEC with an investor protection regime, you want people to know their rights and risk if they take a risk and they lose that’s on them,” she said.
“But you want to have some basic things like exchanges that are registered that have some basic requirements and have to follow the law and this is, I think, the main thing that needs to happen.”
Goldsmith Romero said other “extremely basic” rules could include a ban against co-mingling a company’s assets with customer funds, and brokers, exchanges and clearing houses being required to register with the SEC, the CFTC or in some cases, both.
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The SEC responded shortly after the issuers filed effective registration amendments for staked SOL and Ether exchange-traded funds.
IMF questions Pakistan’s plan to allocate 2,000 megawatts of electricity for Bitcoin mining amid energy shortages and budget talks.
There is “no doubt” the UK “will spend 3% of our GDP on defence” in the next parliament, the defence secretary has said.
John Healey’s comments come ahead of the publication of the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) on Monday.
This is an assessment of the state of the armed forces, the threats facing the UK, and the military transformation required to meet them.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously set out a “clear ambition” to raise defence spending to 3% in the next parliament “subject to economic and fiscal conditions”.
Mr Healey has now told The Times newspaper there is a “certain decade of rising defence spending” to come, adding that this commitment “allows us to plan for the long term. It allows us to deal with the pressures.”
A government source insisted the defence secretary was “expressing an opinion, which is that he has full confidence that the government will be able to deliver on its ambition”, rather than making a new commitment.
The UK currently spends 2.3% of GDP on defence, with Sir Keir announcing plans to increase that to 2.5% by 2027 in February.
This followed mounting pressure from the White House for European nations to do more to take on responsibility for their own security and the defence of Ukraine.
The 2.3% to 2.5% increase is being paid for by controversial cuts to the international aid budget, but there are big questions over where the funding for a 3% rise would be found, given the tight state of government finances.
While a commitment will help underpin the planning assumptions made in the SDR, there is of course no guarantee a Labour government would still be in power during the next parliament to have to fulfil that pledge.
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From March: How will the UK scale up defence?
A statement from the Ministry of Defence makes it clear that the official government position has not changed in line with the defence secretary’s comments.
The statement reads: “This government has announced the largest sustained increase to defence spending since the end of the Cold War – 2.5% by 2027 and 3% in the next parliament when fiscal and economic conditions allow, including an extra £5bn this financial year.
“The SDR will rightly set the vision for how that uplift will be spent, including new capabilities to put us at the leading edge of innovation in NATO, investment in our people and making defence an engine for growth across the UK – making Britain more secure at home and strong abroad.”
Sir Keir commissioned the review shortly after taking office in July 2024. It is being led by Lord Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary and NATO secretary general.
The Ministry of Defence has already trailed a number of announcements as part of the review, including plans for a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command and a £1bn battlefield system known as the Digital Targeting Web, which we’re told will “better connect armed forces weapons systems and allow battlefield decisions for targeting enemy threats to be made and executed faster”.
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PM Sir Keir Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey on a nuclear submarine earlier this year. Pic: Crown Copyright 2025
On Saturday, the defence secretary announced a £1.5bn investment to tackle damp, mould and make other improvements to poor quality military housing in a bid to improve recruitment and retention.
Mr Healey pledged to “turn round what has been a national scandal for decades”, with 8,000 military family homes currently unfit for habitation.
He said: “The Strategic Defence Review, in the broad, will recognise that the fact that the world is changing, threats are increasing.
“In this new era of threat, we need a new era for defence and so the Strategic Defence Review will be the vision and direction for the way that we’ve got to strengthen our armed forces to make us more secure at home, stronger abroad, but also learn the lessons from Ukraine as well.
“So an armed forces that can be more capable of innovation more quickly, stronger to deter the threats that we face and always with people at the heart of our forces… which is why the housing commitments that we make through this strategic defence review are so important for the future.”
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