(Reuters) -U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Rostin Behnam will step down on the day Donald Trump is scheduled to be sworn in as president, he told the Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday.

His departure on Jan. 20 would pave the way for Trump to name a successor who could be more aligned with his deregulatory agenda as Washington prepares for a new cadre of federal regulators.

The U.S. derivatives watchdog did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.

Trump is expected to replace Behnam with one of the agency's Republican CFTC commissioners - Summer Mersinger or Caroline Pham - as acting chair.

A permanent chair would need Senate confirmation and Trump's transition team is also considering external candidates.

A commissioner at the derivatives regulator since 2017, Behnam became acting chair in 2021 and was later given the role permanently.

He was also a senior counsel to Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The CFTC under Behnam was seen as less harsh toward the cryptocurrency industry when compared with the hardline approach that Gary Gensler, as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission had adopted.

But the crackdown on crypto exchange Binance for violation of anti-money laundering laws by the CFTC ended in one of the largest corporate penalties in history and the exit of its talismanic chief, Changpeng Zhao.

Trump has picked Paul Atkins, a Washington lawyer known for his crypto-friendly stance, as the next SEC chief.

Behnam told the FT the regulation for the crypto industry remained insufficient. "You still have a large swath of the digital asset space unregulated in the U.S. regulatory system and it's important... that we fill this gap," he said.

The CFTC remained "well positioned to be a spot regulator for digital commodity assets", he told the British newspaper.

Under Behnam, the CFTC had squared off with event contract marketplace Kalshi, rejecting the use of derivatives to bet on the outcome of political events such as the U.S. presidential election.

But a court ruled in Kalshi's favor, boosting the popularity of election-related betting as Americans headed to the polls in November.

Behnam told the FT he was concerned about the legality and social impact of bets on political and other events.

"The line is going to be very blurred about what is legal, what's illegal," he said, as technology and high retail demand drive growth in these markets.

In line with his focus on climate-related market risk, the CFTC in September approved the first guidelines for trading voluntary carbon credit derivative contracts in the U.S., a move expected to bolster confidence in the nascent market.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru and Hannah Lang in New York; editing by Ed Osmond and Arun Koyyur)