The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced former White House official Carole House as the new chair and blockchain analysis company TRM Labs’ Ari Redboard as the vice chair of its Technology Advisory Committee.
The CFTC published a list of its members to the committee on Monday, announcing the committee had been newly constituted, and is being sponsored by Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, who took office last March.
“To protect our markets from increasingly-sophisticated cyber attacks, to ensure responsible development of digital assets in a way that protects customers, and to ensure that the implications of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are well understood, the Commission requires advice from technology experts,” Goldsmith Romero said in a statement. “These experts can provide us foundational knowledge about the technology, as well as the complex and nuanced impacts and implications of technology on financial markets,” she added.
The Technology Advisory Committee was previously sponsored by former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz, who is now the head of policy at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
House, who helped develop U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive order on crypto, is now an executive-in-residence at Terranet Ventures. Redbord was also previously at the U.S. Treasury Department prior to joining the blockchain analytics firm he is now at.
Other crypto industry representatives to the committee include Circle’s vice president Corey Then, Espresso Systems chief strategy officer Jill Gunter, Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov, Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer, Paradigm policy director Justin Slaughter, Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guido and Lightspark chief strategy officer Christian Catalini, who may be better known for his work on the Diem (formerly Libra) project.
More traditional industry representatives include IBM Fellow and AI Ethics head Francesca Rossi, S&P Global Commodity Insights chief technology and innovation officer Stanley Guzik, ICE Futures U.S. president Jennifer Ilkiw, National Futures Association data director Todd Smith, CME chief information officer Sunil Cutinho and Cboe Digital president John Palmer.
A number of representatives from academia have also joined, including American University law professor Hilary Allen, Michigan Law School assistant professor Jeffery Zhang and Cornell Law School professor Daniel Awrey.
The federal government is also represented: Federal Reserve Board deputy associate director Kavita Jain and deputy assistant secretary of Treasury Todd Conklin have roles at the committee.
The committee will hold its first meeting on March 22, where it will “consider renewing the Cybersecurity Subcommittee, creating a new Subcommittee on Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology that combines and expands two previous TAC subcommittees, and establishing new Subcommittee on Emerging Technologies,” the press release said.
