Major crypto news for the Circle company and its native USD Coin, as they have hired Heath Tarbert as their new chief legal officer.
Meanwhile, Glassnode‘s on-chain data show that on Thursday 15,000 wallets completely sold their USDC within a five-hour window.
Full details below.
Circle’s new legal officer appointment
Circle, the fintech company responsible for a leading cryptocurrency stablecoin, announced Thursday the appointment of Heath Tarbert as its new chief legal officer.
And so, Tarbert will join the company as an executive while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been taking enforcement action against crypto exchanges in recent days.
Starting in July, Tarbert will also assume the role of head of corporate affairs at Circle, leaving his position as chief legal officer at Citadel Securities, a renowned market-making firm founded by billionaire entrepreneur Ken Griffin.
Tarbert’s strong background within government was a determining factor in Circle’s choice, according to a press release.
Indeed, Tarbert brings with him decades of experience from the three branches of the US government, as well as international and corporate leadership experience in the private sector.
Heath Tarbert has held senior positions with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and various government departments in the United States.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Tarbert has worked in the US Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, the Senate Banking Committee, and the White House.
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, commented that Tarbert’s legal expertise and extensive regulatory experience will be a valuable asset to Circle’s global ambitions. His hiring was described as “an extraordinary step in Circle’s growth as a global company” in the press release.
In addition, a Circle spokesperson told Decrypt the following:
“Tarbert is expected to collaborate on a variety of complex global regulatory and policy issues, with government entities and jurisdictions, in areas such as corporate governance, complex merger and acquisition deals, and regulatory negotiations.”
Circle’s USD Coin, one of the largest crypto stablecoins, continues to drop
Unfortunately, the news comes during a period when the market capitalization of USDC (USD Coin) has continued to decline, allowing Tether, Circle’s main competitor, to gain ground, due to the temporary suspension of USDC’s dollar peg by Silicon Valley Bank.
In fact, Circle told Decrypt that stablecoin legislation is necessary to prevent future similar incidents:
“Comprehensive legislation on payment stablecoins will help restore trust in both the US dollar and dollar-denominated digital assets. Circle has long advocated regulation that insulates our basic level of Internet money and payment systems from fractional-reserve banking risks.”
We see that since Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by regulators on 10 March, USDC’s market capitalization has decreased by 32%, from $42 billion to $28.5 billion, according to CoinGecko.
This is the lowest circulating amount of the token since September 2021 and usually reflects the market capitalization.
In March, Allaire described it as “ironic” that Circle was threatened by a crisis in the US banking sector, despite warnings from regulators about the risk of cryptocurrencies for banks.
Moreover, although the lawsuit filed by the SEC against Coinbase does not specifically refer to USDC, we know that the exchange collaborated with Circle in developing the technology behind this token.
In 2018, USDC was the first stablecoin to be listed on Coinbase, and the two companies are co-founders of the CENTER Consortium, the organization responsible for launching this token.
15,000 wallets sell their USDC holdings
Meanwhile, on-chain data on USDC indicates that the cryptocurrency market may soon be subject to turbulence, according to Brett Singer, an analyst at blockchain data firm Glassnode interviewed by Decrypt.
In fact, as anticipated, on Thursday, around 15,000 wallets completely sold off their USDC holdings within a five-hour window, an event that has historically occurred only on rare occasions.
In fact, Singer stated the following:
“There is something going on, hopefully not related to the USDC, specifically. It’s rare to see so many key holders for one token.”
Similar declines in the number of digital wallets holding USDC occurred in June last year during the collapse of Terra‘s algorithmic stablecoin or in November when FTX was hit hard and last March when USDC lost its peg to the dollar.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/06/09/circle-massive-sales-usd-coin-crypto/