Ripple CEO Praises CFTC’s New “Olympics” Crypto Committee

• CFTC named a 35-member Innovation Advisory Committee, including CEOs from Ripple, Coinbase, Uniswap, Solana Labs, and Chainlink Labs.
• The committee also includes leaders from CME, Nasdaq, ICE, DTCC, DraftKings, FanDuel, and Polymarket, per the CFTC roster.

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Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has praised the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s newly announced Innovation Advisory Committee, calling it an “Olympics crypto roster.” The comment followed the CFTC’s release of a 35-member lineup that brings together senior leaders from crypto markets, traditional exchanges, market infrastructure firms, venture capital, academia, and prediction and sports-betting platforms.

The Innovation Advisory Committee is intended to advise the agency as it works to keep pace with technological change in financial markets, with attention on areas such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. The Commission also named Michael Passalacqua as the committee’s designated federal officer.

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The official roster includes executives from major crypto and digital-asset companies and protocols. The membership list includes Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams, as well as Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko and Chainlink Labs co-founder Sergey Nazarov.

Additionally, the panel includes executives connected to crypto trading, custody, and investment firms, alongside representatives listed as professors.

Despite the recent appointment, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has drawn criticism from Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. CNF reported that Hoskinson accused the Ripple CEO of siding with regulators while debating the proposed U.S. CLARITY Act.

CFTC Goes Pro-Crypto

Alongside crypto leaders, the committee includes senior executives from established financial market institutions and infrastructure providers. The roster features CME Group CEO Terry Duffy, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman, Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, and DTCC CEO Frank LaSalla, placing market plumbing and exchange oversight expertise in the same advisory forum as digital-asset operators.

The lineup also includes participants from prediction markets and sports betting, adding another set of firms that intersect with derivatives products and event-based contracts. Names on the CFTC list include Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, and FanDuel President Christian Genetski.

The committee’s work is a way to ensure regulatory decisions reflect current market conditions and to support the modernization of rules as innovations evolve. The Innovation Advisory Committee is a venue for structured input from multiple segments of the marketplace as the CFTC prepares for a larger role in supervising parts of the digital-asset and derivatives landscape.

Late last year, CNF outlined a CFTC tokenized-collateral initiative introduced in September under Acting Chair Caroline D. Pham. The program launched a derivatives pilot allowing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC as collateral, with added monitoring, reporting, and consumer-protection guardrails.

Meanwhile, we reported that Ripple has partnered with Aviva Investors to tokenize traditional investment funds on the XRP Ledger. The collaboration will support issuance and management of tokenized fund products, with initial launches expected this year under a longer-term plan.