Federal Reserve's “Election Day”: Interviews for 11 presidential candidates begin. Who is the crypto community looking forward to the most?

At the beginning of September, the personnel and power structure surrounding the Federal Reserve continued to evolve at an accelerated pace.

On September 3, it was reported that the White House made it clear that it would finalize the candidate for the next Federal Reserve Chairman as soon as possible. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has begun an interview process with 11 candidates, which will begin a series of interviews this Friday and continue for a week.

At the same time, personnel and power movements around a “smooth transition” continue to increase. On the one hand, Trump previously dismissed the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) director, drawing market attention to the independence of official data. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Governor Adrianne Kugler officially submitted her resignation in early August to reserve her seat for the new board of directors. The new US Federal Reserve Governor, Stephen Miran (Stephen Miran), was nominated by Trump and attended the Senate Banking Committee hearing on September 4, local time. Milan emphasized “monetary policy independence” in her written testimony. She will enter the confirmation process with “maintaining independence” as the core statement. Outsiders expect it to advance very rapidly.

With more and more movements, the market has cast a layer of fog over the future. Who will become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve will become the focus of the market's attention?

Who are the 11 candidates for Federal Reserve Chairman?

According to the Federal Reserve's appointment rules, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve must be a current board member. Current President Powell's term as chairman will end in May 2026, and his term as a board member will last until January 2028. If he chooses to continue as a trustee after leaving office, Trump's range of candidates will be limited when appointing a new president in the future. Meanwhile, the current list of 11 core candidates covers elite leaders from all walks of life in politics and business, such as the “Federal Reserve Institution+Former Officials+Wall Street Practitioners.”

Christopher Waller

Christopher Waller is a former director of research at the St. Louis Federal Reserve and has deep academic skills and practical experience in policy practice. Relevant sources and forecasters identified him as the most popular candidate. He is known for his “data-driven but relatively flexible” style. He recently publicly supported cutting interest rates as soon as possible, with a tendency to shift earlier after inflationary pressure has eased. Its series of speeches on stablecoins was clear and consistent, arguing that the private sector takes the lead in innovation under the framework of legislation and reserve regulation.

At the same time, he was a board member personally nominated by Trump during his first term. This current board member, who is “familiar with the rules and has a dovish stance,” is probably Trump's most reassuring successor.

Michelle Bowman

Vice Chairman of Regulation Michelle Bauman is seen as a representative figure of “hawkish regulators.” As one of the youngest members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, she is the strongest female hawkish representative.

In August of this year, she proposed that Federal Reserve staff should be allowed to hold a small amount of crypto assets to improve supervisory understanding, send a signal that they are more “technologically neutral” than before in terms of regulatory standards, but place more emphasis on price stability as a priority in monetary policy.

Philip Jefferson

Philip Jefferson, the 63-year-old current vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, is also one of the popular candidates. He has a deep background in academic and organizational coordination, and is familiar with the daily operations of the Federal Reserve. He is a representative of the “prudent faction”. He is relatively careful about balancing employment and inflation, and is regarded as one of the candidates to ensure the continuity of the existing framework.

Notably, if elected, he would be the first African-American chairman of the Federal Reserve in history.

Lorie Logan

Former Dallas Federal Reserve Chairman Lori Logan was previously responsible for open market operations at the New York Federal Reserve for a long time. His 23 years of experience at the New York Federal Reserve made him very good at market “techniques and tactics” and crisis management. Previously, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic were handled properly under his leadership. He is regarded as the central banker who “knows the most about transactions.”

Kevin Warsh

Former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Walsh is a candidate with both “crisis cycle experience” and “reform issues.” Her father-in-law is Estée Lauder's heir. At age 35, he became the youngest board member in the history of the Federal Reserve. After leaving the Federal Reserve, he studied monetary policy reform at the Stanford Hoover Institution.

The depth of Washington's connections with Wall Street was also seen as a plus, making him considered a popular candidate as early as 2017 during the last round of elections.

James Bullard

Former St. Louis Federal Reserve Chairman James Bullard is famous for being good at “early judgment on inflationary transitions” and has strong communication skills with academia and the market. The market was warned about the risk of inflation as early as 2021, but due to independent personalities and opinions, it has maintained a relatively “heterogeneous” voting record at the FOMC for a long time.

Kevin Hassett

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett has deep ties with President Trump. Due to his position, he analyzes economic data for Trump almost every day, and is even called his “economics professor.”

The two sides have the same policy ideas, and they are candidates with a high level of “political trust.” Its weak point is its lack of experience working within central banks.

Marc Sumerlin

Marco Summerlin previously came from the economic team during the George W. Bush era and was the deputy director of the National Economic Council at the time. However, it proposed the most aggressive US Federal Reserve reform plan, advocating “process reshaping” of the FOMC at the communication and institutional level, and is a “reformer within the establishment faction.”

Larry Lindsey

Larry Lindsey has cross-party experience. He was the chief economic adviser to President George W. Bush, and also served as a member of the Federal Reserve during Clinton's tenure. He is very good at coordinating policies between the White House, central banks, and the market. He has accurately predicted the bursting of the Internet bubble, but now 70, he is questioning the possibility that his perception may be “broken” with modern monetary policy tools.

David Zervos

Jefferies chief market strategist David Zeworth belongs to the “market frontline”. He is famous for his blunt style, harsh comments, and unique strategic perspective, but he has a keen sense of the market and closely communicated with the Federal Reserve and worked for the New York Federal Reserve in the 90s.

Rick Rieder

Rick Reed, BlackRock's Global Fixed Income Chief Investment Officer, is probably the candidate with the most extensive asset management experience in actual combat. He manages BlackRock's super assets of more than 4 trillion US dollars, and the assets he manages have gone through multiple cycles of economic crisis.

In recent months, the media's rhetoric has clearly been biased towards “easing and a recovery in risk appetite.” If they transform into “formulators,” the portability of their “market experience-policy game” and potential conflict of interest issues will be tested together. At the same time, their transformation from managing capital to possible “conflicts of interest” among policy makers will also cause the market to worry.

Three crypto-friendly candidates?

Among them, the most popular candidate, Christopher Waller, also has the most systematic stance on the “cryptoasset—stablecoin—payment innovation” usage scenario.

Waller's scrutiny of crypto assets was almost callous from the start. He has compared most cryptocurrencies to “baseball cards” — they have no intrinsic value, and the price depends on a fragile balance of mood and confidence. Regarding this highly volatile speculative product, he insisted that “the market bears its own profits and losses,” and that taxpayers should not be allowed to pay for investment failures.

Waller showed a different face on the topic of stablecoins. As early as 2021, when stablecoins were only ancillary to crypto assets, he saw the potential of stablecoins. He has emphasized many times that “stablecoins can improve payment efficiency and introduce international competition and speed,” provided that the National Assembly improves legislation and establishes adequate and transparent reserve and custody rules. Since then, in multiple speeches in 2024 and 2025, he has repeatedly urged Congress to enact legislation to prevent crowding and payment system disruptions, so that stablecoins can truly become safe “synthetic dollars.”

Waller has always insisted that innovation should be led by the private sector, and that the government's role is to “build a highway” — clearing infrastructure like FedNow is a driveway, and what drives vehicles should be a competitive force in the market. However, he also warned that once non-bank payment institutions and decentralized platforms lack supervision, they may accumulate leverage, create bubbles, and ultimately endanger financial stability.

Rick Reed and David Zeworth are different from Waller. Apart from theoretical and policy help, they have a considerable degree of intersection with the crypto industry. Rick Reed's involvement is more reflected in the level of capital and industry activities he manages. As BlackRock's Chief Global Fixed Income Investment Officer, he not only participated in activities related to projects such as Circle and Bullish, but also contacted and supported part of the layout surrounding stablecoins and crypto credit through BlackRock's channels. As can be seen from public documents, he has also participated in many open market or primary market events relating to crypto trading platforms, stablecoin issuers, and crypto lenders.

David Zeworth has actually participated in and supported a number of crypto-related projects. He has invested in or supported relationships with eToro (trading platform), Circle Internet Group (the issuer of USDC), Bullish (a crypto exchange supported by Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, etc.), and Figure Technology Solutions (crypto mortgage platform). Furthermore, he was an early supporter of MicroStrategy's Bitcoin purchase program, which is equivalent to indirectly driving the path of Bitcoin's enterprise allocation.

Taken together, Waller represents “institutional friendliness” within the Federal Reserve system, while Zeevos and Reed represent “capital friendliness” from Wall Street. If one of them becomes the chairman in the future, the Federal Reserve's policy direction may be driven by the two-wheel drive of “monetary easing plus crypto institutionalization”, leaving a clearer growth path for the compliant crypto market.

summed

Looking at this list of candidates spanning academic, political, and commercial terms, we can see that the selection of the Federal Reserve Chairman's succession is not only a matter of the pace of monetary policy, but also directly related to the institutional trend of the global financial market and the crypto industry. As far as the market is concerned, the identities and paths of candidates with different statuses all express different future market directions.

At the same time, observers also warned that Trump's high-frequency operations on nominations and personnel arrangements have caused the market to continue to accumulate concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve. If the new chairman is overly viewed as an extension of “politicization,” it may accelerate easing and the release of risk appetite in the short term, but it will also increase medium- to long-term fluctuations in US dollar assets and institutional credibility.

As far as the crypto industry is concerned, no matter who eventually takes office, the real benefit is not the “friendly label,” but rather whether the path of institutionalization can be implemented. How to delineate the boundaries between stablecoin legislation, bank embedding, and decentralized payments is the key to determining whether the industry can benefit from policy dividends in the medium to long term.

In other words, the arrival of a new chairman is probably just a prelude; what the market needs to pay more attention to is whether the system is actually moving towards compliance and transparency.