Fed "Election Day": 11 chairman candidates interview kicks off, who does the encryption circle most hope will take office?

At the beginning of September, the personnel and power landscape surrounding the Fed continued to evolve rapidly.

On September 3, it was reported that the White House has clearly stated that it will quickly finalize the candidate for the next Fed chairman. Treasury Secretary Scott Benset has initiated the interview process for 11 candidates, which will start this Friday and continue for a week.

At the same time, personnel and power moves surrounding a “smooth transition” are increasing. On one hand, Trump previously removed the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), raising concerns in the market about the independence of official data. On the other hand, Fed Governor Adriana Kugler formally submitted her resignation in early August to make room for a new governor. The newly appointed Fed governor, former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) Stephen Miran, was nominated by Trump and attended the Senate Banking Committee hearing on September 4 local time. In her submitted written testimony, Miran emphasized “the independence of monetary policy,” stating that she would approach the confirmation process with a focus on “maintaining independence,” and the external expectation is that her progress will be very rapid.

As more and more actions unfold, the market has been shrouded in a mist regarding the future, and who will become the next Fed chair has become the focus of market attention?

Who are the 11 candidates for Fed Chairman?

According to the Fed's appointment rules, the chairman of the Fed must be a current governor. The current chairman, Powell, will end his term in May 2026, while the term for governors lasts until January 2028. If he chooses to continue serving as a governor after stepping down, Trump's candidate pool for appointing a new chairman in the future will be limited. Currently, the locked-in list of 11 core candidates includes elite leaders from various sectors such as “Fed establishment + former officials + Wall Street practitioners.”

Christopher Waller

Christopher Waller is the former research director of the St. Louis Fed, with a strong academic background and practical policy experience. Relevant parties and the prediction market regard him as the hottest candidate; he is known for his “data-driven yet relatively flexible” style and has recently publicly supported a prompt interest rate cut, leaning towards an earlier pivot after inflationary pressures ease. His series of speeches on stablecoins are clear and coherent, advocating for innovation led by the private sector under legislative and reserve regulatory frameworks.

At the same time, he is a council member personally nominated by Trump during his first term. This “rule-savvy, dovish” current council member may be Trump's most trusted successor.

Michelle Bowman

Regulatory Vice Chair Michelle Bowman is seen as a representative of the “hawkish regulators.” As one of the youngest members of the Federal Reserve Board, she is the toughest female hawk representative.

She proposed in August this year that Fed officials should be allowed to hold a small amount of crypto assets to enhance their understanding of supervision, sending a more “technically neutral” signal in regulatory terms than before, but placing greater emphasis on the priority of price stability in monetary policy.

Philip Jefferson

Philip Jefferson, the current 63-year-old Vice Chairman of the Fed, is also one of the popular candidates. He has a strong academic and organizational background, is familiar with the daily operations of the Fed, and is a representative of the “pragmatist” camp. His cautious approach to balancing employment and inflation makes him one of the candidates viewed as ensuring the continuity of the existing framework.

It is worth noting that if he is elected, he will be the first African American Fed chairman in history.

Lorie Logan

Former Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, who previously worked for a long time at the New York Fed in charge of open market operations, has 23 years of experience at the New York Fed, making him very skilled in market “tactics and strategies” and crisis management. He handled both the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic effectively under his leadership. He is regarded as the central banker who “understands trading the most.”

Kevin Warsh

Former Fed governor Kevin Walsh is a candidate who embodies both “crisis cycle experience” and “reform issues.” His father-in-law is the heir to Estée Lauder, and he became the youngest governor in Fed history at the age of 35. After leaving the Fed, he researched monetary policy reform at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

The connections between Washington and Wall Street are also seen as a plus, which made him a popular candidate as early as the last election cycle in 2017.

James Bullard

James Bullard, the former president of the St. Louis Fed, is known for his ability to “make early judgments on turning points in inflation” and has strong communication skills with academia and the market. As early as 2021, he began warning the market about the risks of inflation, but due to his independent personality and views, he has maintained a relatively “outlier” voting record on the FOMC.

Kevin Hassett

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, has a deep connection with President Trump. Due to his position, he analyzes economic data for Trump almost every day, and Trump even refers to him as his “economics professor.”

The policy philosophies of both parties align, making them candidates with extremely high “political trustworthiness.” Their weakness lies in the lack of experience within the central bank.

Marc Sumerlin

Mark Sumerlin previously came from the economic team during the Bush administration, serving as the deputy director of the National Economic Council at that time. He proposed the most radical Fed reform plan, advocating for a “process overhaul” of the FOMC in terms of communication and institutional levels, being a “reformist within the establishment.”

Larry Lindsey

Larry Lindsey has cross-party experience, having served as Chief Economic Advisor to President George W. Bush and as a Federal Reserve Governor during the Clinton administration. He is very skilled at coordinating policies between the White House, the central bank, and the markets, and accurately predicted the bursting of the internet bubble. However, at the age of 70, he faces skepticism from the market regarding his understanding of modern monetary policy tools due to a potential “discontinuity” in his knowledge.

David Zervos

David Zervos, Chief Market Strategist at Jefferies, belongs to the “market frontline faction” and is known for his straightforward style, sharp comments, and unique strategic perspective. He has a keen market sense and maintains close communication with the Fed, having worked at the New York Fed in the 1990s.

Rick Rieder

Rick Rieder, BlackRock's global fixed income chief investment officer, is likely the candidate with the most extensive experience managing large assets in practice. He oversees more than $4 trillion in assets at BlackRock, and the assets he manages have gone through multiple rounds of economic crisis cycles.

In recent months, the media has clearly leaned towards “easing and a rebound in risk appetite.” If it transforms into a “policy maker,” the transferability of its “market experience - policy game” and potential conflicts of interest will be jointly examined, while the potential “conflicts of interest” arising from its transition from managing funds to being a policy maker have also raised concerns in the market.

Three crypto-friendly candidates?

Among the most popular candidates, Christopher Waller is also the one with the most systematic position on the use cases of “crypto assets - stablecoins - payment innovation.”

Waller's examination of crypto assets has been almost harshly calm from the very beginning. He has compared most cryptocurrencies to “baseball cards”—lacking intrinsic value, with prices dependent on a fragile balance of emotions and confidence. Regarding this highly volatile speculative asset, he insists that “the market should bear its own risks,” and taxpayers should not foot the bill for investment failures.

On the topic of stablecoins, Waller has shown a different side. As early as 2021, when stablecoins were still merely an appendage to crypto assets, he recognized their potential. He has repeatedly emphasized that “stablecoins can improve payment efficiency, introduce international competition and speed,” provided that Congress完善立法, establishes sufficient and transparent reserve and custody rules. Subsequently, in multiple speeches in 2024 and 2025, he repeatedly urged Congress to legislate to prevent runs and disruptions in the payment system, allowing stablecoins to truly become a safe “synthetic dollar.”

Waller has consistently maintained that innovation should be led by the private sector, and the role of the government is to “build the highways”—the clearing infrastructure like FedNow serves as the lanes, while the forces driving the vehicles should be market competition. However, he also warns that if non-bank payment institutions and decentralized platforms lack regulation, they could accumulate leverage and create bubbles, ultimately threatening financial stability.

Rick Reed and David Zewos are different from Waller in that, in addition to theoretical and policy support, they have a considerable degree of intersection with the crypto industry. Rick Reed's involvement is more reflected in the funds he manages and industry activities. As the Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, he not only participates in activities related to projects like Circle and Bullish, but also engages and supports certain layouts around stablecoins and crypto lending through BlackRock's channels. Public documents indicate that he has also participated multiple times in public market or primary market events related to crypto trading platforms, stablecoin issuers, and crypto lending institutions.

David Zervos has been actively involved in and supported multiple crypto-related projects. He has investment or support relationships with eToro (trading platform), Circle Internet Group (issuer of USDC), Bullish (a crypto exchange supported by Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, and others), and Figure Technology Solutions (a crypto mortgage platform). In addition, he supported MicroStrategy's Bitcoin buying plan early on, which indirectly promoted the corporate adoption of Bitcoin.

Overall, Waller represents the “institution-friendly” within the Fed system, while Zervos and Reed represent the “capital-friendly” from Wall Street. If one of them becomes the chair in the future, the Fed's policy direction may, under the dual drivers of “monetary easing + crypto institutionalization”, leave a clearer growth path for the compliant crypto market.

Summary

Looking at this candidate list that spans academia, politics, and business, it can be seen that the choice of successor for the Fed Chair is not just a matter of monetary policy rhythm, but directly concerns the institutional direction of global financial markets and the cryptocurrency industry. For the market, the identities and paths of candidates from different backgrounds are all expressing different future market directions.

At the same time, observers also remind that Trump's frequent operations in nominations and personnel arrangements have led to growing concerns in the market about the independence of the Fed. If the new chairman is overly seen as an extension of “politicization,” it could accelerate the release of easing and risk appetite in the short term, but it also increases the medium- to long-term volatility of dollar assets and institutional credibility.

For the cryptocurrency industry, regardless of who ultimately takes office, the real benefit does not lie in the “friendly label,” but in whether the institutional pathways can be implemented. The legislation of stablecoins, the integration of banks, and how the boundaries of decentralized payments are defined are key factors that determine whether the industry can benefit from policy dividends in the long term.

In other words, the arrival of the new chairman may just be the prologue; what the market needs to focus on is whether the system is truly moving towards compliance and transparency.