President Trump Nominating Brian Quintenz as Head of CFTC

President Donald Trump is nominating Brian Quintenz as the next chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the organization that oversees the regulation of commodities markets and prediction markets such as Kalshi.

Quintenz, who previously served as a commissioner on the CFTC from 2017 to 2021, confirmed the nomination on social media.

Quintenz Has Background in Crypto, Kalshi

More recently, Quintenz has been head of policy for a16z, the cryptocurrency venture firm of Andreessen Horowitz. He also served on the advisory council for Crypto.com and is currently a board member for Kalshi.

That background has pundits feeling bullish for cryptocurrency as well as for Kalshi and other prediction markets.

“It is my great honor to be nominated by President Trump as the next Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where I had served as a Commissioner in his last administration,” Quintenz wrote. 

“The CFTC plays a critical role in maintaining robust hedging and price discovery markets that are the envy of the globe. The agency is also well poised to ensure the USA leads the world in blockchain technology and innovation.”

Kalshi was the first prediction platform to attempt to offer contract markets on the 2024 presidential election. The CTFC tried to halt trading on those markets, arguing that they were a threat to election integrity. But in October 2024, an appeals court lifted a temporary freeze, opening the door for Kalshi and other commodities markets to offer election-based predictions.

More recently, Robinhood ran into an issue with the CFTC, which requested that the platform take down its Super Bowl event contracts. The platform complied but expressed disappointment with the outcome.

Quintenz Has Supported Predictive Sports Markets

Quintenz had previously weighed in on a similar issue in 2021, when derivatives exchange ErisX tried to offer similar NFL markets. ErisX ultimately removed those markets before the CFTC issued an order asking it to do so. At the time, Quintenz said he would have dissented against any order forcing ErisX to remove those contracts.

“It is not the case that trading an event contract with a binary outcome is automatically considered a bet, wager, or gamble from a regulatory perspective,” Quintenz wrote in a statement at the time. 

“There are plenty of events that have a discernible and legitimate economic impact and whose probabilistic outcomes can be estimated through an analysis of relevant factors. That could now be just as true for sporting events as it is for oil, corn, or gold production.”

While that doesn’t automatically mean that Quintenz would side with Kalshi on anything the platform might want to offer, his stance will be relevant as predictive platforms look to expand their scope.

Kalshi also has other connections to the current administration. In January, Kalshi added Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic adviser.

“On Election night at Mar-a-Lago, while biased outlets called the race a coin toss, my family and close friends used the prediction market Kalshi to know we won hours ahead of the fake news media,” Trump Jr. said in a statement announcing his decision to join Kalshi. “I immediately knew I had to contribute to their mission.”