Coinbase, Ripple and Gemini Sit on the CFTC Committee That…

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s newly launched Innovation Advisory Committee holds its inaugural meeting Thursday, Aug. 20, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET. Members will meet in person while the public can follow via webcast. The agenda covers crypto assets, artificial intelligence and prediction markets, as well as recent CFTC work in those areas.

The session comes less than a day after White House talks on crypto policy, during which President Donald Trump pressed Congress on the CLARITY Act. Coinbase, Ripple and Gemini were represented at both meetings. Their CEOs — Brian Armstrong, Brad Garlinghouse and Tyler Winklevoss — are members of the new committee. Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour also sit on it, alongside executives from Kraken, Crypto.com, Robinhood and Uniswap Labs. Traditional market infrastructure is represented by Nasdaq, CME Group, Cboe Global Markets and Intercontinental Exchange.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig created the committee in January as the successor to the Technology Advisory Committee. It cannot make rules, but its recommendations can feed into the agency’s policy and rulemaking process. The panel gives companies likely to be affected by future regulation a formal channel to weigh in on how those policies should work.

With the CLARITY Act still unresolved in Congress, the committee’s role is being watched closely. The CFTC can continue to advance crypto rulemaking under authority it already holds through the Commodity Exchange Act, but it cannot claim powers that only Congress can grant, such as comprehensive spot-market jurisdiction. Selig and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins have described regulatory action as complementary to legislation, and their Project Crypto effort is built around using existing agency powers while preparing for a possible future statutory framework.

Prediction markets may be the most immediately relevant topic. Kalshi and Polymarket already operate CFTC-regulated designated contract markets, while the CFTC has been defending its federal jurisdiction against state challenges. Since April, the agency has sued nine states over actions against federally regulated prediction markets. New York has sued Kalshi and brought related actions involving Coinbase- and Gemini-linked prediction-market businesses, while a Minnesota federal judge recently blocked that state’s prediction-market ban at the preliminary stage, saying federal law was likely to preempt it.

The market scale is significant: as of July 1, about $197 million had traded across 1,408 midterm-related markets on Kalshi and Polymarket, with the California governor’s race the largest single market at $47.9 million.

At Thursday’s meeting, the main signal to watch is whether members press for practical treatment of crypto and event-contract businesses under rules the CFTC already controls — covering registration, derivatives, collateral, trading venues and SEC coordination. The committee cannot set policy on its own, but with crypto firms and major exchanges seated together, it is likely to help shape the CFTC’s next regulatory steps.