The CFTC holds its first public meeting on innovation, accepting written comments until August 27, following a closed-door meeting at the White House.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is expected to hold the first meeting of the Innovation Advisory Committee on Thursday, bringing issues on the management of crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets onto the agency’s public agenda. 

The meeting takes place just one day after President Donald Trump met with leaders from the crypto-asset business, prediction markets, and senior financial regulators at the White House, where crypto-asset management was also discussed in depth. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said before the meeting that the United States faces an important choice about how to approach emerging financial technologies.

Set the agenda and political context from the White House

The first session of the Innovation Advisory Committee is expected to focus on three main areas. The first content centers on the development process for crypto asset management activities, including the lack of a comprehensive federal-level framework for market structure, differences between each state’s licensing mechanisms, and the role of law enforcement measures in shaping regulation, along with how regulators could complement laws that Congress may pass in the future.

The second session will examine the relationship between artificial intelligence and financial markets, including autonomous AI agents capable of executing trades and managing investment portfolios, while the final session focuses on prediction markets—especially the respective roles of the federal agency and state-level agencies in regulating event-based contracts, an issue that is in dispute between platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket and regulators in some states.

A closed-door meeting at the White House on Wednesday, attended by SEC Chair Paul Atkins, CFTC Chair Mike Selig, and the White House’s crypto assets advisor Patrick Witt, provided direct political context for the CFTC meeting, even though the agenda for the advisory committee had been publicly disclosed in advance and was independent in nature.

At that meeting, Trump urged Congress to pass a fair version of the CLARITY Act, a bill still mired in many disagreements related to the ethics rule, enforcement authority, provisions on illegal financing, and the balance of power between the federal government and states. The Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote on September 15 after lawmakers enter the August recess without pushing the bill further.

Unlike the meeting at the White House, the Innovation Advisory Committee’s session is held in a public format, where entrepreneurs, technology experts, and other stakeholders can offer input on practical challenges arising from emerging financial technology.

Written comments on the committee’s activities will continue to be accepted through August 27, creating an opportunity for the CFTC to consider issues spanning many areas of financial market policy rather than limiting itself to crypto assets.