Prediction platforms Polymarket and Kalshi witnessed a sharp ascent in wagering for the pro-digital asset nominee as Trump’s probable Federal Reserve chairman selection, concurrently as internal Federal Reserve policy alterations generated resistance from seasoned personnel.
Kevin Hassett, the US President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council director, is regarded by prediction platforms Polymarket and Kalshi as the most likely nominee to succeed Jerome Powell as the ensuing Federal Reserve chairman.
The probabilities of Hassett obtaining the post have abruptly surged to 66% on Polymarket and 74% on Kalshi at the time of composition. Hassett is extensively perceived as favorable toward digital assets owing to his former tenure on Coinbase’s consultative board, a declared seven-figure financial holding in the exchange, and his direction of the White House digital asset study collective.
Remarks were delivered on X by Caitlin Long, founder and chief executive officer of the Wyoming-domiciled Custodia Bank, and a distinguished proponent of digital asset-favorable statutes.
“If this comes true & Hassett does become Fed chairman, anti-#crypto people at the Fed who still hold positions of power will finally be out (well, most of them anyway). BIG changes will be coming to the Fed.”
Kevin Hassett’s Crypto Track Record
Hassett, a veteran Republican policy financial expert, was recalled to Washington as Trump’s foremost economic counsel and has presently been recognized as the market-inferred principal contender to supervise the Federal Reserve.
No less than a seven-figure financial holding in Coinbase and remuneration for attendance on the exchange’s Academic and Regulatory Consultative Body are divulged by his fiscal documentation, positioning him extraordinarily proximate to the digital asset sector for a prospective Federal Reserve chairman.
Nonetheless, the digital asset sector has previously been disappointed by over-interpreting “crypto-knowledgeable” curricula vitae. Gary Gensler arrived at the Securities and Exchange Commission with MIT blockchain coursework included on his record, yet he proceeded to preside over a succession of highly-publicized enforcement measures, some of which were characterized by detractors as “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.”
A Federal Reserve supervised by Hassett could be more receptive to innovation and less spontaneously adverse to bank-digital asset operations. Nonetheless, the establishment’s obligation regarding fiscal stability suggests that a unilateral certainty concerning deregulation ought not to be presumed by market participants.
Internal Fed Pushback on Oversight
The Hassett probabilities have escalated precisely as the Federal Reserve’s singular methodology for financial institution oversight has encountered opposition from veteran figures such as Fed Governor Michael Barr, who gained recognition as one of Operation Chokepoint 2.0’s foremost creators.
Pursuant to Caitlin Long, it is contended that while he, Barr, “was Vice Chairman of Oversight and Regulation, Warren’s directives were executed by him,” and he “has clarified that alterations introduced by Trump and his designees will be resisted by him.”
Novel Supervisory Operating Principles were issued by the Federal Reserve on November 18, which pivot examiners toward a “risk-priority” structure, mandating personnel to concentrate upon substantive security and solidity exposures instead of procedural or record-keeping concerns.
In an address delivered the same day, Barr cautioned that restricting supervisory scrutiny, diminishing assessment protocols, and making the issuance of enforcement actions or matters requiring prompt attention more difficult could cause examiners to respond sluggishly to emerging dangers, asserting that excising those essential instruments might reproduce antecedent pre-crisis errors.
Subsequent days later, in Consumer Affairs Disclosure 25-1, it was specified by the Federal Reserve that the novel Supervisory Operating Principles are not extended to its Consumer Affairs oversight program (an area under Barr’s command as a governor).
If forecasting platforms are precise and a digital asset-receptive Hassett assumes this environment, his Federal Reserve would not be commencing with a tabula rasa, but would be entering an establishment already undergoing an intermediate shift on how severely (and in what areas) financial institutions are pressured by it.
