CSV Partner Andrew Rodgers Quoted in New York Times Article Detailing CFTC Pullbacks on Crypto and Prediction Market Enforcement

May 24, 2026

In a New York Times investigation, "How Prediction Markets and Crypto Firms Steamrolled a Watchdog Agency," CSV partner and former CFTC trial attorney Andrew Rodgers is quoted on the dramatic transformation underway at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.  The article chronicles a sharp pullback in enforcement—just two crypto cases announced in the second Trump administration, compared with more than 80 during the Biden years—and a striking pivot on prediction markets, where the agency has shifted its enforcement stance and is actively litigating against states that have moved to restrict sports-related prediction market trading under state gaming laws.  At the same time, three firms with ties to the Trump family's business—Polymarket, Crypto.com, and a Gemini affiliate—won favorable treatment from agency leadership, including former acting chairman Caroline D. Pham and her senior counsel, who intervened to advance the companies' interests before decamping for jobs at the very industries they had just been regulating.  Those policy shifts have been accompanied by an exodus of career staff: senior officials who raised red flags about fraud protections and small-investor fairness were placed on leave, demoted, or pushed out, and the agency's workforce has been slashed to its smallest size since the 2009 financial crisis.  Reflecting on the upheaval inside the agency, Andrew Rodgers told the Times that "there was a sustained effort to oust enforcement staff who worked on some of the agency's more significant cryptocurrency matters."  Sole remaining commissioner Michael S. Selig now wields unilateral authority over an agency whose portfolio the White House is poised to expand even further.