‘Extraordinarily unusual’ for CFTC to reverse Gemini settlement deal: Ex-chair

As the CFTC and Gemini work together to seek a court's reversal of a 2025 settlement, one of the agency’s former chairs said the public “deserves a better explanation.”

A former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) responded to the agency’s move to vacate a $5 million settlement with cryptocurrency company Gemini.

In a Wednesday motion filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the CFTC joined the Gemini Trust Company in seeking relief from the judgment of a case initially filed in June 2022. The company reached a $5 million settlement with the CFTC in January 2025 while the agency was under former US President Joe Biden.

“[T]he CFTC’s action in reversing itself on a settled case is extraordinarily unusual,” Tim Massad, a former CFTC chair and research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, told Cointelegraph. “The explanation seems to be that the staff got it wrong, not that the law was unclear.”

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