When finews.com met Chris Giancarlo at Sygnum Bank’s headquarters in Zurich, he radiated confidence. The former head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) speaks quickly, shoots straight, and connects ideas at lightning speed.

Known as «CryptoDad» for having green-lighted Bitcoin futures during his CFTC tenure, he was reportedly discussed as a possible «Crypto Tsar» in the Trump 2.0 administration. Today, he serves as an advisor to both Sygnum Bank and Laser Digital, Nomura’s digital-asset subsidiary in Zurich.

Mr. Giancarlo, welcome to Switzerland.

Thank you. I come every year to St. Moritz for the CFC conference. I’m also an advisor to Laser Digital, which is a subsidiary of Nomura, and I sit on the Nomura parent company board. About nine months ago, I’ve joined Sygnum as a senior policy advisor – a new and exciting endeavor for me.

You spent decades in traditional finance before joining regulators. Why did you decide to join a Swiss bank instead of a U.S. firm?

It wasn’t because it’s Swiss. It’s because I believe banking services for this growing industry are both critical and a huge opportunity. Coming out of the Biden administration, there was a real squeeze on crypto activity in the United States. We all saw the debanking – the pressure on U.S. banks not to lend to or even service crypto companies. I thought that was wrong. Sygnum wasn’t facing those same constraints. It was well-funded, clear-eyed, and ready to fill that gap while U.S. banks were pushed out. I told them from the start: this window won’t last forever. When policy changes, American banks will come back – but until then, you have a head start.

The policy shift from the Biden administration to Trump 2.0 has been striking. How do you explain such a drastic turnaround?

First, Donald Trump isn’t a typical American president who comes in with the backing of Wall Street. He’s a real-estate guy with a long, uneasy history with the big New York banks. He’s never been a champion of traditional bank activity – he’s closer to market-based finance than bank-based finance. Second, during Trump 1.0, crypto wasn’t political. It was generational. When my agency launched Bitcoin futures, the opposition mostly came from people over sixty – Republican or Democrat, American or European – who confused financial stability with preserving the status quo. One of my favorite novels is Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), and it says: «For things to stay the same, they must change.» That’s true for finance. If a system wants to remain stable, it must evolve.

«He ran as the pro-crypto candidate and attracted young male voters who might otherwise lean liberal.»

What changed everything was Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse. He was a major donor to Democrats, including President Joe Biden. When that scandal broke, all those contributions came to light, and Democrats decided the best defense was offense – by turning against crypto. Suddenly, Democrats became the anti-crypto party. Trump, being a clever politician, seized the opening: «If you’re against it, I’m for it.» He ran as the pro-crypto candidate and attracted young male voters who might otherwise lean liberal. After winning, he began delivering on those promises. It also helped that the crypto industry became a major campaign donor – outspending the traditional banking lobby in the last cycle. So yes, Trump 2.0 has turned him into the crypto president.

And that explains the personnel shake-up we’ve seen?

Exactly. The Trump 2.0 team moved fast. Step one was to reverse Biden-era policies – starting on inauguration day with executive orders firing people like Gary Gensler at the SEC, who architected the anti-crypto stance, and others who had been debanking the industry at the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve, including Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice-chair for supervision. Step two was installing pro-innovation regulators even before new legislation was passed. Paul Atkins, a long-time friend of mine, is now SEC chairman. Michelle «Miki» Bowman became vice-chair for supervision at the Fed, and new leadership took over at the OCC – all genuinely pro-innovation people. Step three is about making those changes durable through legislation. The Genius Act, passed in May 2025, was the first major piece of U.S. financial legislation in fifteen years. It had bipartisan support – quite an achievement for a controversial president. The next big bill is the Clarity Act, which will finally sort out how the SEC and the CFTC share responsibility for crypto trading. That’s the next frontier.

So the U.S. is entering a crypto boom?

In trading, crypto is now an accepted – even hot – asset class. Bitcoin has been the best-performing asset seven out of the past ten years. Firms like Citadel, Jump Trading, and DRW are major players, and the big banks are back with prime-brokerage and funding. Beyond trading, the technology is spreading. Citibank and J.P. Morgan are tokenizing deposits to make payments faster and cheaper. MoneyGram uses stablecoins for remittances – a massive, inefficient market. Dollar-based stablecoins like Tether are widely used across Africa and Southeast Asia. In lending, the 30th-largest «bank» in the U.S. isn’t a bank – it’s Aave, a protocol aggregating capital and making loans. Banks are watching closely.

«That’s where the world is heading, and there’s no turning back.»

We’re entering a world where computers not only talk to each other, as they did in the first Internet wave, but transact with each other – using AI and digital money. Let me give you an example. On my Swiss International Airlines flight to Zurich last night, I wanted to send three emails. I logged in, found my credit card, mistyped the number, re-entered it, checked my credit, and finally paid $20 for the whole flight. In the near future, AI will automate that entire process. My phone will instruct my digital wallet to pay Swiss’ wallet directly – token to token – in fractions of a cent. Only digital money can handle that level of micro-transaction. That’s where the world is heading, and there’s no turning back. Once the U.S. takes the brakes off, everyone else will have to speed up – or risk being left behind in an analog world.

Where do you see the next global hotspots for digital-asset innovation?

Switzerland had a huge head start, but it didn’t manage it as well as it could have – disappointing, frankly. Then the U.S. went into reverse, and the UAE seized the opportunity. They did a remarkable job. But now Trump 2.0 is removing all barriers, making it seamless to register and license in the U.S. Combine that with America’s market liquidity and venture capital depth, and I think the action will return to the U.S. I also advise Polymarket, the prediction-market platform. It’s blocked in both Switzerland and the U.S., yet it just attracted a $2 billion investment from Jeff Sprecher, the owner of the Intercontinental Exchange, the world’s largest exchange group. Even he sees that marketplaces are changing – becoming democratized and decentralized. Of course, like every technological boom, this will produce bubbles and corrections. But when those bubbles burst, nobody says, «Let’s go back to paper checks.» The rails are laid; the direction is set.

From a philosophical point of view: how do you balance innovation and regulation?

We mustn’t confuse financial stability with defending the status quo. At the same time, some principles are timeless – access to credit, financial inclusion, honest disclosure, and protection against fraud. These values must endure even as technology advances. That’s the regulator’s duty: to understand and adapt to new technology while preserving core values. When I served on the board of IOSCO, the global body of securities regulators, we worked to ensure exactly that. In the U.S., investor protection and fair disclosure remain non-negotiable, no matter how digital finance becomes.

«Crypto is not just an asset class; it’s a new architecture of finance.»

Crypto’s pioneers dreamed of a world free from control. Isn’t that vision fading?

It’s misunderstood. If you read the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper carefully, it doesn’t call for freedom from government. It calls for freedom from intermediaries – from banks. Every advanced society accepts that the public sector has a role in preventing fraud and abuse. That’s not the same as giving up freedom.

Still, crypto was meant to challenge central-bank monopolies.

True, and central banking has always been controversial in the U.S. Our first two central banks failed, both financially and politically. The Federal Reserve is barely a century old and still debated. Many libertarians believe in law enforcement but not necessarily central-bank control. That tension is part of America’s DNA.

Crypto valuations have cooled lately. What’s your outlook for the next decade?

Valuations rise and fall – corrections are healthy. Compared with five years ago, crypto prices are still high and outperform most other asset classes. For all Bitcoin’s volatility, oil has been even wilder – remember when oil traded below zero? But more importantly, crypto is not just an asset class; it’s a new architecture of finance – an Internet-based architecture. Within ten years, much of global banking and capital markets will run on digital-network rails. Within six years, no major securities offering – debt or equity – will be off-chain. Those that stay analog will trade at a discount to those that are tokenized.

J. Christopher Giancarlo is a former Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC, 2014–2019), where he oversaw the launch of regulated Bitcoin futures and earned the nickname «Crypto Dad» spoken advocacy of digital innovation. In 2021, he published a book titled «CryptoDad. The Fight for the Future of Money». Today, he serves as an advisor to Sygnum Bank and Nomura’s digital-asset arm Laser Digital and sits on the global board of Nomura Holdings. Giancarlo also co-founded the Digital Dollar Project, promoting leadership in preparing the US Dollar for the digital 21st century.