The Senate late Thursday voted to approve Michael Selig to be the new chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where he will oversee registered prediction markets like Kalshi.
Selig was approved as part of Senate Resolution 532, a “bloc vote” on 97 nominees appointed by President Trump for various government agency roles. The vote was 53-43. The collective vote followed a vote in September that lowered the threshold for Senate approval of groups of sub-Cabinet nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority.
Selig finally fills the role of CFTC chair, which has been filled only in an acting capacity by Caroline Pham since January, when previous chair Rostin Benham stepped down.
The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry passed Selig’s nomination Nov. 20, 12-11, along party lines.
Selig will be, at least at first, the only CFTC commissioner, giving him an unusually high level of potential influence over the regulator. Pham will leave for payments company MoonPay when Selig starts as chair, while Summer Mersinger and Christy Goldsmith Romero both left their roles as commissioners at the end of May, and Kristin Johnson left in August. It’s not yet clear when Selig will start his new job.
Selig favors sports event contracts
Selig has appeared supportive of sports event contracts in the past. During his time as a lawyer for Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, where he worked on a July 2024 letter that argued that it was “arbitrary and capricious” to ban sports event contracts, while working as outside counsel for a venture capital fund.
In his committee hearing last month, Selig answered almost all sports event contracts questions he faced by saying he would look to the courts for guidance, even when it came to questions that were not the subject of ongoing legal debates.
For example, when Senator Adam Schiff asked Selig whether a bet between the two of them on that Thursday’s Buffalo Bills game would be gambling, Selig said, “On this issue, I would look to the courts.”
Selig was nominated for CFTC chair after the nomination of Trump’s original pick, Brian Quintenz, stalled.
Quintenz — a current Kalshi director and shareholder, as well as a former CFTC commissioner — was twice scheduled for a committee vote, but both votes were cancelled.
On the second occasion, a committee spokesperson said the White House had asked for the vote to be pulled. It was later reported that cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and Trump donors the Winklevoss twins — co-founders of Gemini, which this week launched its own prediction market — had lobbied the president against going forward with Quintenz as nominee.
