Chris Giancarlo, a.k.a. "Crypto Dad," Is a Serious Contender to Become the First-Ever U.S. "Crypto Czar"

The former public servant, who is known as “Crypto Dad” due to his work in advancing clear regulations during his two-year tenure

Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Chris Giancarlo, who is known as “Crypto Dad” due to his work in advancing clear regulations during his two-year tenure, is a serious contender to become the first-ever U.S. "Crypto Czar."

The new position is being weighed by President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to make the United States the "crypto capital of the world."

Giancarlo, who is a key member of the Trump transition team, told The Block in an interview on Wednesday that he has already turned down positions running the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Trump has been very specific in laying out a series of initiatives to make the United States the crypto capital of the world,” said Giancarlo, referring to a July speech the once and future president made at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville.

This includes “creating a strategic reserve of bitcoin to creating a Crypto Council to guaranteeing people's ability to have self-hosted wallets,” Giancarlo said. “In other areas he's talked about a capital gains exemption for gains on U.S. domestic cryptos. He's talked about ending the debanking of crypto — sometimes called Choke Point 2.0 — and the a passage of new rules and regulations out of the CFTC and the SEC as well as stablecoin legislation.”

Giancarlo added that crypto will be a “considerable priority” for the incoming administration. Although a former crypto skeptic, Trump cozied up to industry players over the past year while seeking reelection and has made a number of promises to improve the outlook for the crypto industry in the U.S.

“As candidates go, they're often not very specific. I think Trump was remarkably specific about what he would do,” said Giancarlo, noting that the real estate magnate has surrounded himself with pro-crypto advocates like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

“The amount of attention and campaign contributions the crypto industry contributed this cycle is quite remarkable, and probably dispositive in a number of races,” Giancarlo said. “The fact that contributors like Fairshake [the pro-crypto SuperPAC backed by entities like Coinbase] have dry powder left over could contribute to the next cycle and will result in responsive policy.”

Indeed, a cohort of industry leaders strongly favored Trump’s reelection. In one instance, at least 18 donors gave more than $5.5 million in various tokens to the Trump 47 joint fundraising committee mere days before Election Day.

To some extent, Trump is already making good on his word to support crypto — perhaps partly because of his familial connections to blockchain projects like the decentralized lending protocol World Liberty Financial. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has reportedly met with the incoming president to help shape his crypto platform.

Giancarlo said there’s an “existing gap right now” in crypto regulation, particularly in the spot market trading of the two largest cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ether. He noted that he supported efforts by Senator Debbie Stabenow, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to give the CFTC authority over digital commodities markets.

“The CFTC has overseen more new product launches than almost any regulator in the world and certainly more than the SEC,” Giancarlo said. “The CFTC is a very capable and competent regulator and can handle that spot authority.”

He added that the current SEC administration had dropped the ball on regulating crypto and that Chairman Gary Gensler should have “followed our example” of the CFTC actively engaging with the industry when Giancarlo was in charge. Giancarlo took over Gensler in leading the CFTC in 2018 and said he had to “clean up” his predecessor’s mess.

“Gensler's unwillingness to engage with crypto has actually kept it at a less mature phase of its development,” Giancarlo said. “Ending the suppression is going to bring it to a more mature and more useful period of development.”

He rebutted Gensler’s claims that current securities rules should apply to crypto projects and companies. Giancarlo said there was a missed opportunity to create “procedures and policies tailored to crypto.”

“I've heard over and over again: 'same activity, same rules,’” said Giancarlo. “But that's actually not the way the SEC operates. There are different rules for municipal securities than there are for corporate debt. There are different rules for debt securities than there are for equity securities. There are different rules for private placements than there are for public offerings. The SEC has a long tradition of having tailored regulations.”

Apart from that, Gensler has also dramatically reduced the agency’s standing among the American public and federal court system through its “overreach on enforcement actions and litigation.” This includes when it was sanctioned for lying during a case it brought against a Utah-based crypto firm.

“That did tremendous damage to the morale of the agency of earnest and hardworking federal employees who are embarrassed to be associated with an agency that would cut corners in order just to win cases