Tyler Winklevoss has ‘serious concerns’ over Trump’s pick to lead the CFTC, Brian Quintenz

Gemini’s Winklevoss twins are doubling down on their objection to Brian Quintenz leading the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. According to Tyler Winklevoss, brother to Cameron, the former Andreessen Horowitz executive is rife with conflicts of interest and does not have the right mentality to lead such an influential organization.

Quintenz’s nomination is already in question. President Donald Trump named Quintenz as his preferred candidate to head up the CFTC in February, a decision that, at the time, many crypto industry leaders celebrated, including Cameron Winklevoss. In recent days, however, the White House has asked the Senate Agriculture Committee to delay a vote on Quintenz’s ascension to office.

Lawmakers were reportedly set to push through Quintenz’s nomination Monday evening before the committee canceled the vote, for reasons that are still unclear. Some have pointed to a potential missing vote count or the American Gaming Association’s concerns over Quintenz’s support of prediction markets.

Others have said Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, among other industry players, have successfully voiced their concerns over Quintenz’s supposed agenda. While initially supportive of Quintenz, who by most accounts would be measured as a crypto industry insider, the Winklevoss twins “have learned a lot of new information.”

“Many in our industry have serious concerns with this nomination,” Tyler Winklevoss told The Block in an interview.

Quintenz, a former CFTC commissioner, did not respond to emails requesting comment.

Crypto’s concerns

According to one Quintenz critic who asked not to be named, there are three main concerns coming from the crypto camp opposed to his nomination: Quintenz’s supposed “antithetical” views towards crypto coding, his history as a bureaucrat, and his support of CBDCs. This is to say nothing of Quintenz’s potential financial biases, given his position at the a16z venture firm and board seat at prediction markets company Kalshi.

“He’s the wrong person for this nomination and to chair the CFTC,” Winklevoss, an avowed supporter of Trump, said. “His policy is not in line with the stated goals and policy of President Trump and the Trump administration. And they’re actually quite antithetical to the ethos of crypto and decentralization.”

For one thing, another source argued, Quintenz is on record saying he supports direct liability for smart contract developers — the idea that if someone publishes code, they could be liable for how someone uses it. In other words, if you’re an engineer and you publish a smart contract that a bad actor misuses, you could face charges for that.

This is a central issue in the ongoing Roman Storm case, where the government has accused the Tornado Cash founder of wrongdoing, in part, because the North Korean hacking collective Lazarus Group laundered stolen funds through the decentralized mixing service.

Then there is the question of Quintenz’s history in government, including his previous stint at the CFTC. The crypto camp takes offense to Quintenz’s stated goal of increasing the agency’s budget, which stands in contradiction to Trump’s goal of cutting red tape and shrinking the size of the government.

Quintenz’s nomination could have a particularly disastrous effect on crypto market structure legislation that’s currently being considered by Congress, the source argued, namely the Clarity Act, which, if not done correctly, could create regulatory moats under an enlarged and expanded CFTC.

Conflicts of interest?

All of this is to arrive at perhaps the most biting critique of Quintenz, informed by the recent findings of author and prediction markets expert Dustin Gouker, who found potentially concerning issues during Quintenz’s nomination process through a Freedom of Information Request Act.

According to the article Gouker published on Saturday, a Quintenz associate may have requested non-public information from the CFTC about the approval processes for one or more “designated contract markets,” like the prediction markets QCX, which is under consideration, or Railbird, which was recently approved — both of which would compete against Kalshi.

“The communication asked for by Quintenz’s camp doesn’t appear to be that out of the ordinary in the course of preparing to take over a federal agency in general or the CFTC in particular,” Gouker wrote. “But there’s some question about whether Quintenz should be asking for or receiving some of this information, given the fact that he’s still a member of Kalshi’s board.”

Of note, Quintenz has stated he would relinquish his position on Kalshi’s board upon his confirmation.

Despite the objections to Quintenz, Winklevoss and the others have been remiss in putting forward another candidate. But if Quintenz is shut down, that essentially leaves just three courses of action, namely keeping Acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham in place, hiring SEC Chair Paul Atkins to also lead the CFTC, or finding an alternative.

“We didn’t fight this hard to get the most pro-crypto administration into office to then settle here where we create a new problem,” Winklevoss said.

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