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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has announced the first meeting of the revamped Innovation Advisory Committee. This committee was formed by rebranding the previously existing Technology Advisory Committee. The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 20, and will take place at the agency’s main office in Washington from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. An online broadcast will be available for all interested parties on the CFTC’s official website. The committee chairman, Michael S. Seleg, who oversees overall operations, released the agenda on August 11. The main topics for discussion will be crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. In his statement, Selig expressed his anticipation of meeting with business leaders and developers to discuss the impact of the latest technologies and financial instruments on market architecture. Michael Passalacqua has been appointed as the committee’s federal representative.

It is important to note that this committee is not a completely new entity, but rather a reorganized structure. Back in January, Selig announced the transformation of the Technology Advisory Committee into the Innovation Advisory Committee, stating his intention to include members from the Innovation Council under the agency’s CEO in its membership. At that time, a public call for applications was opened, which ended on January 31. Two weeks later, on February 12, the final list of 35 participants was published. The new composition is significantly larger than the previous one, both in terms of the number of participants and the diversity of the organizations represented.

Seven positions in the updated committee were taken by the heads of companies specializing in contracts related to sports and other events, as well as betting platforms. Among them are Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi, and Shane Coplan, head of Polymarket. They were joined by Jason Robins from DraftKings, FanDuel President Christian Genetski, Vlad Tenev from Robinhood, Crypto.com CEO Chris Marszalek, and Luke Hursten from Bitnomial. In addition, the committee includes a broad community related to cryptocurrencies: Brian Armstrong (Coinbase), Hayden Adams (Uniswap Labs), Brad Garlinghouse (Ripple), Tyler Winklevoss (Gemini), Arjun Sethi (Kraken), Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana Labs), and Sergey Nazarov (Chainlink Labs). The group also includes leaders from traditional exchange and clearing platforms, including CME Group, Nasdaq, Cboe, Intercontinental Exchange, and DTCC. The investment segment is represented by venture fund partners such as Chris Dixon from a16z crypto and Alana Palmedo from Paradigm.

It is noteworthy that the formation of this advisory body is taking place against the backdrop of active legal and regulatory confrontations between the CFTC and some of the aforementioned companies. The commission has filed lawsuits against nine states concerning prediction markets and has presented its arguments in appellate courts and the Massachusetts Supreme Court, asserting its jurisdiction over the products produced by the committee’s members. Interestingly, the market participants themselves do not always demonstrate unity: in June, Polymarket accused Kalshi of corporate espionage, and DraftKings and FanDuel, while acting as market makers on prediction platforms, simultaneously compete with them through their betting operations.

In addition to the legal proceedings, the meeting coincided with a two‑week surge in regulatory activity directed specifically at these participants. On August 12, the CFTC’s Market Oversight Division issued recommendations on the self‑certification of market maker programs, ensuring liquidity, and incentive mechanisms, citing an increase in the number of submitted documents related to sports event contracts. These documents revealed procedural and substantive shortcomings, and exchanges were given until September 14 to address them. Back in June, the commission proposed a conceptual approach to determining when event contracts conflict with the public interest, including clarifying the concept of “gambling.” All of this is happening simultaneously with the preparations for the meeting, to which representatives of the same organizations have been invited.

Officially, the committee is positioned as an exclusively advisory body, established to provide recommendations and analytical conclusions to the Commission. It does not have regulatory or executive powers. Nevertheless, its activities make it possible to record the positions of key market players on controversial issues, which can be useful both for the regulator and for the participants themselves. The opportunity for direct dialogue between the parties, who often find themselves in opposing camps during legal proceedings, makes this meeting an important event, despite the non‑binding nature of its decisions.