Circle Appoints Former CFTC Chair Heath Tarbert New Legal Chief

USDC-issuer Circle has named a former regulator as its new chief legal officer.

Heath Tarbert, one-time chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will become Circle’s new legal chief and head of corporate affairs July 1, the company announced in a news release Thursday (June 8).

“The opportunity to welcome Heath’s expertise and leadership to our executive team is an extraordinary step in Circle’s growth as a global company,” Circle Co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said in the release. “As we continue building a bridge between traditional finance and Web3, Heath’s perspective, legal acumen and global regulatory experience will help us advance the utility value of USDC worldwide.”

In addition to his time with the CFTC, Tarbert has also served as vice chairman of the International Organization of Securities Commissions, assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury for international markets, and U.S. executive director of the World Bank Group.

Earlier in his career, he served as a Supreme Court law clerk, associate White House counsel and special counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He comes to Circle following a stint as chief legal officer at Citadel Securities.

“I’ve long been intrigued by both Jeremy Allaire’s vision of moving money safely at internet speed and Circle’s tangible accomplishments as a respected, trusted global leader in payments with a regulatory-first approach,” Tarbert said in the release.

Earlier this week, PYMNTS wrote about the future of stablecoins such as USDC in the wake of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s back-to-back legal actions against crypto platforms Coinbase and Binance.

These exchanges both offer stablecoin staking. If staking undergoes a seismic shift — for example, if platforms abandon the practice on their own or find themselves forced to — the repercussions could be substantial.

The site Staking Rewards showed that the staking “market cap” of USDC is about $1.3 billion, where the total market cap of that stablecoin stands at about $28 billion.

“Might it be the case that if staking as a model is threatened, then many of these stablecoins may see downward pressure on their prices and might even threaten the fiat ‘peg’ in place or break the proverbial buck?” PYMNTS wrote Tuesday (June 6). “The stablecoin market has been shrinking for more than a year, and estimates have the market overall at $128 billion, so this week’s news, and uncertainty on staking, may be unwelcome.”

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