Commodity Futures Trading Commission Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham today announced her departure from public service. Her last day at the Commission will be December 22, 2025.

Pham was sworn in as a CFTC Commissioner on April 14, 2022, after being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She was designated as the CFTC’s Acting Chairman on January 20, 2025, following the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to lead the CFTC during such a historic moment for market structure and innovation,” said Acting Chairman Pham. “I am incredibly proud of the CFTC and all its dedicated staff for their hard work and commitment this year to deliver on our pledge to get back to basics and regular order. As I said at the beginning of the year, as the CFTC celebrates our 50th anniversary, we have always served our mission to promote market integrity and liquidity in the commodity derivatives markets that are critical to the real economy and global trade — ensuring American growers, producers, merchants, and other commercial end-users can mitigate risks to their business and support strong U.S. economic growth. 

“This year, we also refocused on our mandate to promote responsible innovation and fair competition as the CFTC prepares to take on expanded oversight of new markets and new products like digital assets, crypto, and prediction markets. I am deeply grateful for the CFTC’s expertise, experience, and care in safeguarding the public’s trust while championing progress, growth, and access to markets. I am thrilled to welcome Michael Selig as the 16th Chairman of the CFTC. His pragmatic, common sense approach will ensure the CFTC strikes the right balance of innovation and market integrity.” 

During Acting Chairman Pham’s tenure at the CFTC, she has been a champion for good government, proposing and implementing a number of reforms to protect Constitutional rights and promote due process and transparency. Pham’s decisive leadership delivered results this year on providing regulatory clarity, right-sizing regulations, promoting innovation, ending regulation by enforcement, and modernizing the CFTC’s operations for both efficiency and effectiveness. 

Accomplishments include addressing longstanding Dodd-Frank Act issues and swaps regulation, issuing a comprehensive framework for self-reporting and cooperation in enforcement actions and referrals for non-compliance issues, and enabling innovation in market structure, such as perpetual contracts, 24/7 trading, and prediction markets. Pham launched the CFTC’s Crypto Sprint to implement the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets report recommendations, achieving historic milestones such as listed spot crypto trading on CFTC-registered futures exchanges, digital asset markets pilot program, tokenized collateral guidance, and the CFTC Crypto CEO Forum and CEO Innovation Council. 

Her CFTC modernization efforts include deploying the CFTC’s first automated market surveillance system, saving nearly $50 million in annualized costs, and restructuring the CFTC’s organization and operations to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. Pham’s efforts to reduce regulatory burdens to promote U.S. economic growth has resulted in unlocking many tens of billions of dollars of capital and collateral regulatory relief and saving an estimate of hundreds of millions of dollars annually for market participants, as well as launching a pilot program to increase liquidity and hedging in energy markets and deliver potentially billions in energy savings.