Rostin Behnam

Behnam is a graduate of Georgetown University and earned a JD from the Syracuse University College of Law. He practiced law in New York City and worked at the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.⁠[1][1]

From 2011, Behnam served as counsel to U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and later as senior counsel to Stabenow as Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, focusing on policy and legislation related to the CFTC and the Department of Agriculture.⁠[1][1]

On July 13, 2017, Behnam was nominated to be a CFTC commissioner for a term expiring June 19, 2021; on August 3, the Senate unanimously confirmed J. Christopher Giancarlo as chairman and Brian D. Quintenz and Behnam as commissioners.⁠[2][3][3]

On September 6, 2017, Behnam was sworn in as a CFTC commissioner. He said he was honored to join the Commission at a critical time, working to protect customers and ensure the market is free of fraud and manipulation.⁠[1][1]

On November 14, 2017, Behnam gave his first public speech as a commissioner at the Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy, titled “The Dodd-Frank Inflection Point,” saying that implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act had reached an inflection point but that the policy goals had not changed.⁠[4][4][4]

That year, the first bitcoin futures contracts were launched through self-certification. Behnam later said that he had warned at the time that regulators and policymakers too often find themselves at the tail end of technological advancement, and in his first months in office he convened the Market Risk Advisory Committee to discuss the self-certification process for the first bitcoin futures contract.⁠[5][6]

Behnam formed the Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee under the Market Risk Advisory Committee, whose membership the Commission unanimously confirmed in November 2019; he charged the subcommittee with exploring the relationship between climate risk and financial market risk and making recommendations, and its 34 members came from banking, asset management, insurance, agricultural and energy markets, environmental groups, and other fields.⁠[7][7][7][7]

In September 2020, the subcommittee released its report, Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System. On October 1, testifying before the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Behnam called it a “first-of-its kind” document.⁠[7][7][7]

On January 21, 2021, after former Chairman Heath P. Tarbert announced his departure from the chairmanship, the CFTC commissioners unanimously elected Behnam acting chairman. Behnam thanked President Biden for the opportunity and said that as a commissioner he had focused on ensuring rules prioritize customer protection, examining potential systemic market risk, and addressing climate-related financial market risk.⁠[2][2][2][2]

On December 15, 2021, the Senate confirmed Behnam by voice vote as CFTC chairman and confirmed him to a new commissioner term expiring June 19, 2026. He formally became chairman on January 4, 2022, the agency’s 15th.⁠[8][8][9][10]

On February 9, 2022, Behnam testified on digital assets before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry for the first time as chairman. He noted that the CFTC had no direct regulatory authority over cash markets, only fraud and manipulation enforcement authority.⁠[11][11]

On December 1, 2022, Behnam testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee under the title “Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse.” He said the FTX events laid bare the consequences of lacking stringent, uniform standards; that the CFTC had brought more than 60 enforcement cases in the digital asset space since 2014, with total penalties of just over $820 million; but that limited enforcement authority was no substitute for comprehensive regulation, and that he had asked Congress directly for authority to impose the CFTC’s traditional regulatory regime on the digital commodity market.⁠[5][5][5][5][5]

On December 13, the CFTC sued Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the crypto hedge fund Alameda Research. After FTX collapsed in November 2022, he was charged in the United States with misappropriating customer funds; in November 2023 a jury found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, in March 2024 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit about $11 billion, and in 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected his appeal.Open the full entry, FTX Trading, and Alameda Research in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging fraud and material misrepresentations in the sale of digital commodities and alleging that the defendants’ conduct caused the loss of over $8 billion in FTX customer deposits. Behnam said the CFTC would use all available enforcement tools and authorities to protect investors.⁠[12][12][12][12]

On September 22, 2023, the CFTC issued an order prohibiting certain congressional control contracts from being listed or traded on or through KalshiEx LLC. Behnam explained that the decision was based on findings that such political event contracts involve both gaming and activity unlawful under state law, and are contrary to the public interest.⁠[13][13]

Behnam later recalled that the subsequent lawsuit went in Kalshi’s direction, that “we have to trust the decision of the judiciary,” and that the core issue in the 2024 litigation was how to define gaming.⁠[14][14][14]

On July 10, 2024, at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on digital commodity oversight, Behnam said what concerned him most was that everyday Americans kept falling victim to digital asset scams while there was still no completed legislative response; he said the single most important thing he had done was to keep urging Congress to fill the regulatory gap, and that Congress “must act quickly.”⁠[15][15][15]

On January 7, 2025, Behnam announced that he would step down as chairman on January 20 and leave the Commission on February 7, and that he would work with President Trump’s team to ensure a smooth and orderly transition. On January 8, he gave his final official remarks at the Brookings Institution, describing them as his last as the CFTC’s 15th chairman.⁠[16][16][17][17]

On January 20, the CFTC commissioners unanimously elected Caroline D. Pham acting chairman. On February 7, Behnam left the CFTC after nearly eight years as a commissioner; the remaining commissioners credited him with leading the agency through a time of rapid change in the derivatives markets.⁠[9][10][10]

On September 28, 2026, the crypto policy podcast Crypto In AmericaCrypto In AmericaCrypto In America is a U.S. crypto policy podcast and newsletter launched in March 2025 and co-hosted by journalists Eleanor Terrett, Jacquelyn Melinek, and Gerald Gallagher. It focuses on interviews with American crypto policymakers, legal minds, and founders and covers congressional legislation and regulatory developments; the show is produced with sponsorship from Sei.Open the full entry released Eleanor Terrett’s interview with Behnam, recorded during Georgetown University’s Psaros Financial Markets Quality Conference. Behnam said that because of the “blurry line between risk management and gambling,” prediction markets were moving very fast and it was probably time for Congress to weigh in; he said that with disparate circuit court opinions, the related litigation could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court.⁠[18][19][14][14][14]

Discussing crypto regulation after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate, he said there was still a federal regulatory gap and that any solution devised under existing authority was “a little bit of like scotch tape and paper clips” and could be challenged in court, so regulators now had a greater premium than ever on being exact about the law.⁠[18][14][14][14]

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission: Official website: https://www.cftc.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]