In May, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and his team in charge of government relations and policy went to the White House. At the time, US lawmakers were debating whether the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should be the main federal market regulator for the crypto industry.
Newly released visitor logs show that Bankman-Fried, Eloria Katz, FTX’s director of government relations and policy, and Mark Wetjen, an ex-CFTC commissioner who is now FTX’s head of policy, went to the White House in mid-May to meet with policy advisor Charlotte Butash and counselor Steve Ricchetti. The meeting meetings were not written down in the logs.
The CFTC is currently looking at a proposal from FTX that would let it settle certain crypto transactions directly.
The traditional finance (TradFi) industry has been very against this application.
During a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, which oversees the CFTC, Terry Duffy, the chief executive officer of CME Group, said that FTX’s proposal for direct settlement was “risky.””
“It would be very bad for this to go to other markets,” “at the time, he said.
Sam Bankman-Fried, for his part, has said more than once that FTX has no plans to grow beyond digital assets. He talked to Congress at the same hearing on May 12, which was also the day he met with Ricchetti.
No one knows yet when the CFTC will decide what to do about FTX’s proposal.
There are bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate that would give the CFTC more control over the crypto market, but they are moving slowly.
Gabriel joined Bankman-Fried and the FTX regulatory team.
During one of the meetings with Butash, Bankman-Fried, who runs a political action committee called Guarding Against Pandemics, talked about how the government could do a better job of responding to pandemics.
