Commissioner Kristin Johnson to sponsor CFTC Market Risk Advisory Committee

Unit­ed States Com­mod­i­ty Futures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (CFTC) com­mis­sion­er Kristin N. John­son was named the spon­sor of the agency’s Mar­ket Risk Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (MRAC) on Tues­day. She replaced CFTC chair Ros­tin Behnam in that role.

John­son was nom­i­nat­ed to be a CFTC com­mis­sion­er by U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in Sep­tem­ber 2021, con­cur­rent to the nom­i­na­tions of com­mis­sion­er Christy Gold­smith Romero and act­ing chair­man Behnam as the per­ma­nent chair. John­son was sworn in on March 30. She moved into the posi­tion after spend­ing over a decade as a law pro­fes­sor. John­son is the author of aca­d­e­m­ic papers in which she has advo­cat­ed for stricter con­trols over cryp­tocur­ren­cy. John­son said in a statement:

“Hav­ing spent my career in risk man­age­ment over­sight, I appre­ci­ate the MRAC’s sig­nif­i­cant and crit­i­cal role in advis­ing the Com­mis­sion on risk man­age­ment in our mar­kets includ­ing the emerg­ing decen­tral­ized mar­ket struc­tures in dig­i­tal asset or cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­kets that may not rely on intermediation.”

Spon­sor­ships were allot­ted among the five CFTC com­mis­sion­ers Tues­day for five out of the six CFTC com­mit­tees, with the excep­tion being the CFTC-SEC Joint Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The MRAC is made up of 36 indus­try lead­ers in deriv­a­tives and oth­er finan­cial mar­kets as well as aca­d­e­mics and reg­u­la­tors. It includes mem­bers of the Fed­er­al Reserve Banks of New York and Chica­go, HSBC chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Chris Dick­ens, Gold­man Sachs man­ag­ing direc­tor Amy Hong, Black­Rock man­ag­ing direc­tor Eileen Kiely and mem­bers of the Futures Indus­try Association.

John­son will give the keynote address “explor­ing an appro­pri­ate reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for [..] the bur­geon­ing decen­tral­ized dig­i­tal asset mar­ket” at the FIA’s Inter­na­tion­al Deriv­a­tives Expo in Lon­don on June 8.