CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham Will Join MoonPay to Lead Legal and Regulatory Strategy
The move comes as her successor, Mike Selig, is set for Senate confirmation this week
Pro-crypto Acting Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Caroline Pham is diving headfirst into the crypto industry, taking on a new role as Chief Legal and Administrative Officer at crypto payments firm MoonPay, Crypto in America has learned.
The move comes as her successor, crypto lawyer Mike Selig, is set for Senate confirmation this week, bringing to a close her nearly four‑year tenure as a Republican commissioner, including her final year as acting chair of the derivatives regulator, during which she served as the sole commissioner for several months.
Pham won’t be a stranger to Washington in her new role, where she will oversee all global legal and administrative functions while leading the company’s policy and regulatory strategy in the nation’s capital. She has not yet announced a start date but is slated to begin in the new year.
“I’m excited to join MoonPay at a pivotal moment,” Pham said in a statement.
Pham is slated to join MoonPay fresh off a year of driving sweeping modernization efforts at the CFTC, where she advanced a range of crypto-friendly policies through her self-styled “Crypto Sprint,” acting on recommendations from the White House Digital Assets Report released in August.
Her most recent initiatives included allowing listed spot crypto products to trade in U.S. federally regulated markets via CFTC‑registered futures exchanges, launching a pilot program permitting bitcoin, ether, and stablecoin USDC to be used as collateral in U.S. derivatives markets, and exploring the use of tokenized assets such as Treasuries and money market funds for the same purpose. She also announced plans to rescind 2020 guidance on digital asset “actual delivery” in retail transactions to better align with current regulations.
Pham also named twelve CEOs to the new CFTC CEO Innovation Council, a forum aimed at addressing market structure issues in derivatives markets, and established the Digital Asset Markets Pilot Program, a regulatory sandbox designed to foster responsible innovation in crypto.
Her partnership with SEC Chair Paul Atkins has helped strengthen collaboration between the two regulators, who have historically clashed over digital assets and, despite being so-called “sister agencies,” largely operated independently. This year, they have worked more closely to support joint efforts in crypto trading, DeFi, prediction markets, and perpetual contracts.
MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright called Pham “one of the most influential leaders in U.S. financial regulation” and the “perfect leader” to guide MoonPay through its next chapter of growth and compliance.
Before her confirmation as commissioner in 2022, Pham spent seven years at Citigroup, one of Wall Street’s largest banks.