Caroline Pham, the acting chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures and Trading Commission, has openly discussed an intention to leave the commission once she’s permanently replaced, people familiar with her plans have said, leaving significant questions about the future track of agency policy.

If President Donald Trump’s nominee for the chairmanship, former Commissioner Brian Quintenz, is confirmed by the Senate to take the job, the departure of Republican Pham could coincide with the planned exit of fellow Republican Commissioner Summer Mersinger to run the Blockchain Association.

Who’s left? The new Republican chairman — who served as a policy head for a16z after leaving the agency — would find himself alongside a single fellow commissioner: Democrat Kristin Johnson.

This leaves Quintenz with practical control of the agency’s agenda and staffing, because almost all of its employees will report to his office. But the CFTC could be hamstrung to make new policy as Congress is working on legislation that could assign the regulator new powers over the crypto industry. The longer it waits before the White House picks nominees to face Senate confirmation, the longer the potential delay of higher-stakes policy work that requires commission involvement.

The CFTC normally has five members — a chair and two others from the majority party plus two commissioners from the minority party. If Quintenz gets the Senate nod, he’s taking over the spot currently held by Christy Goldsmith Romero, a Democrat who said she’s leaving her extended stint in government service when this role ends.

The sole Democrat, Johnson, hasn’t cultivated a reputation for her digital assets views, like the sharper rhetoric associated with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lone Democrat, Caroline Crenshaw. It’s unclear what common ground, if any, would be carved out between Johnson and Quintenz if they were to serve as a two-person commission.

Mersinger will start as CEO of the crypto lobbying group Blockchain Association at the start of next month, according to board president and chair Marta Belcher’s remarks highlighting the new hire on Wednesday at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, calling her a person who could take crypto «to the next level in policy.»

«This decision is not easy, and it breaks my heart to leave the agency that I have grown to love so much over the last five years,» Mersinger said in a statement. She’ll soon be lobbying on policy that is likely to one day direct her former agency to regulate the spot markets for the bulk of crypto trading in the U.S.

As the interim head of the agency appointed after Trump reclaimed the White House, Pham, a former executive at Citigroup Inc., has taken an aggressive stance to ease the CFTC’s use of enforcement actions to steer crypto matters and to rethink some of its policy positions.

The acting chairman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment after hours on Wednesday.

Before Pham and Mersinger arrived in a slate of four appointees that also included Democrats Johnson and Romero, the CFTC had been down to two commissioners. The recently departed Chairman Rostin Behnam, a Democrat, had served for a time with Dawn Stump, a Republican.

It’s unclear what the president’s nomination strategy may eventually be for the CFTC’s potential three vacancies if Pham departs, which would include one position for a Democrat. So far, Trump has sought to remove Democratic appointees from federal regulatory agencies, such as at the Federal Trade Commission and the National Credit Union Administration.

Read More: CFTC Commissioner Mersinger to Be CEO at Blockchain Association

As the stablecoin competition is heating up with looming regulation in the U.S., traditional finance institutions are taking notice—largely out of fear of losing out to digital dollars, said Ben Reynolds, BitGo’s managing director of stablecoins, at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

Speaking at a panel discussion, he said that BitGo’s recently launched stablecoin-as-a-service has seen “incredible inbound” interest from U.S. and foreign banks wanting to tokenize deposits or issue stablecoins.

«A lot of banks are just being defensive—they’re afraid they’re going to lose their deposits,” Reynolds said. «They look at stablecoins and say: How do we not get left behind?»

Yield-bearing versions of stablecoins and tokenized money market funds have seen rapid growth recently, but still make up only a fraction of the $230 billion stablecoin market.

A16z’s Sam Broner said that while yield-bearing stablecoins are a promising market segment, their primary use case is for payments and transactions where users don’t really care about yields. Still, a near-term killer use case could be “collateral mobility”—the ability to instantly move money to meet obligations across different platforms.

«You can’t do a lot of things with a share of a money market fund,» Broner said. «You’ve got lock-up periods, business-hour settlement, and contracts that have to be manually reviewed. Crypto gives you programmatic, permissionless flexibility.»

Yield-bearing stablecoins could also be attractive for institutions, said Matt Kunke, crypto product strategist at BlackRock. «If you’re a DAO, protocol, or market maker, moving between crypto holdings on an exchange and your brokerage account is slow and full of friction,» he said. «Stablecoins that carry yield just reduce that drag.”

However, regulatory distinctions will shape the market. “A tokenized Treasury fund is a security, and an actual stablecoin is not,” he explained. “They deserve fundamentally different markets.»

Joseph Saldana, chief financial officer of the Wyoming Stable Token Commission, pointed out that yield–generating tokens have the power to broaden investors’ access compared to mutual funds that often have minimum limits of investment that «lock out a lot of people.»

«We want to service the underbanked and give broader access to instruments the rest of us enjoy every day,» Saldana said.

TORONTO — Despite a recent setback, U.S. President Donald Trump should be able to sign stablecoin and market structure legislation before Congress goes on break in August, said White House official Bo Hines on Wednesday.

Lawmakers are still discussing the legislation, which is good, said Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, said on stage at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

«Negotiations are ongoing,» he said. «But I remain steadfast in my optimism that we’re going to achieve — the President’s desire is to do it — but stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation before the August recess.»

Still, he acknowledged that the legislative process was «evolving.»

Hines said earlier in the day that Trump’s crypto ventures, as well as the president’s family’s tie-ups, did not pose any conflicts of interest.

«His sons have the right to engage in capital markets as private business people, like anyone else does in the U.S.,» he said on CoinDesk TV. «I don’t see any conflict in doing so. By the way, it should be exciting that they’re engaging in this space. If you’re a good business person, you should be looking at digital assets and saying, ‘how can I get involved?’ Because this is the next generation of finance.»

He repeated this argument on stage at Consensus.

«As we launch these tariff negotiations and trade negotiations play themselves out, we want to establish ourselves as a leader in digital asset financial technology more generally,» he said.

Asked on CDTV about reports that a small company was purchasing TRUMP coins, Hines said, «I’ll say very firmly, the president of the United States can’t be bought.»

The White House and members of its working group are still working on a strategic Bitcoin reserve, Hines said on stage.