Q&A: CFTC Outlook and Digital Asset Regulation with Orrick Partner Dan Ullman
Dan Ullman is a partner in Orrick’s Financial and Fintech Advisory group, where he advises clients in the crypto, fintech, and gaming sectors navigate complex and rapidly evolving regulatory challenges. Dan joined Orrick in October 2025 after 16 years at the CFTC, where he served as Chief Trial Attorney and, most recently, as an Associate Director in the Division of Enforcement.
Dan brings deep expertise in all facets of financial derivatives, including futures, swaps, options, digital assets, prediction markets, event contracts, and physical commodities. He has played a key role in many of the CFTC’s most significant enforcement actions, including helping establish the Commission’s jurisdiction over digital currency as a commodity.
We spoke with Dan about his background and practice, the evolving regulatory landscape, and what’s ahead for the industry.
Q: Dan, you recently joined Orrick from your position at the CFTC. Can you describe how the CFTC fits in the financial regulatory space, both historically and now?
A: First things first: I am thrilled to be at Orrick. I am thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to incorporate my derivatives practice into the firm.
The CFTC originated within the Department of Agriculture in 1936. In 1974, the Commission became an independent federal agency with five appointed commissioners. The CFTC’s original mission was to protect farmers, ensuring fair price hedging in physical agricultural products.
The CFTC was considered a “sleepy” agency until the Dodd-Frank Act. Suddenly, the CFTC became “the most important agency you’ve never heard of,” a major banking regulator overseeing all types of financial derivatives and swaps, not just agriculture futures. The CFTC’s history — and the tension between a former agricultural regulator now overseeing the most complicated, exotic and innovative financial products — is represented by the iconography of the CFTC’s logo. It features a farm plow in its center, surrounded by an eight-sided trading pit, connoting futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
You led significant enforcement actions, complex litigation, and trials during your tenure at the Commission. How do you see that experience with financial services enforcement shaping your perspective and approach when advising clients on regulatory risk and dispute resolution?
It is extremely important to consider government investigations and private party litigation when providing regulatory advice. In this regard, there are very few experienced trial attorneys in the derivatives regulatory space, and my courtroom experience provides a “seeing around corners” approach to investigations, litigation and regulatory advice. Of course, in complex government derivatives litigation or private arbitration, having an experienced trial advocate leading the case is critical.
Your background spans both traditional financial regulation and the regulation of emerging areas like cryptocurrency and digital assets. How do you see these two areas interacting, and how is the relationship between established financial institutions and newer fintech or digital asset platforms evolving?
Finance and technology are clearly converging. Even though we are happily in a period of financial innovation, it is important for all market participants, banks and intermediaries to stay in compliance with industry regulations. This is especially true as the CLARITY Act — the most significant and important piece of financial legislation since Dodd-Frank — winds through Congress (recent bill draft covered here).
Speaking of which, following the U.S. House’s passage of the CLARITY Act, recent Senate proposals on market structure have aimed to clarify the respective roles of the CFTC and SEC in regulating digital assets. As things stand now, how do you assess the potential impact of these legislative efforts on the industry broadly?
The CLARITY Act will have a tremendous, once-in-a-generation impact. It will affect the entire topography of the international financial system. In short, the CLARITY Act will set forth a comprehensive regulatory structure for digital assets and under this new legislation will grant the vast majority of authority to the CFTC.
The CLARITY Act may impose on market participants and intermediaries an entirely new, top-down regulation scheme, extremely similar to swaps regulation under Dodd-Frank. There are hundreds of financial services firms, currently transacting in digital currency, which will have to be registered with the Commission under the CLARITY Act. Additionally, these firms will have to comport with the entire CFTC compliance scheme, which is difficult and complicated. Consequently, digital currency intermediaries will now need “boots on the ground” expertise in the Act and CFTC regulations.
Apart from market structure legislation for digital assets, are there other key regulatory or market trends you’ll be monitoring in the financial services or fintech sectors?
The CFTC has a new chair, Michael Selig. It will be extremely interesting to monitor his agenda. Likewise, assuming passage of the CLARITY Act, there will be a tremendous amount of rulemaking at the Commission that will determine the scope and depth of the CLARITY Act for banks and market participants. As any swap dealer can tell you, this is where the rubber hits the road in CFTC regulatory compliance.
Thanks, Dan. For a deeper dive with Dan Ullman on CFTC priorities and the CLARITY Act, listen to his two-part series on Orrick’s RegFi podcast: