Former CFTC Chairman and Circle President Tarbert: Advocating Long-Termism While Cashing Out $30 Million

Author: Zen, PANews

"Circle focuses on long-term development, believing that stock prices will eventually provide answers."

Faced with the grim reality of a 70% drop from its peak stock price and a significant evaporation of market value, on July 14, former CFTC Chairman and Circle President Heath Tarbert expressed the above view during an interview with FOX Business when asked what he would say to investors who bought Circle stocks at historical highs.

However, the reality is not favorable for Circle. Analysts at Mizuho Securities USA LLC recently downgraded Circle's rating from "neutral" to "underperform," setting a target price of $50, the lowest on Wall Street.

As the stock price continues to decline, urging ordinary shareholders to adopt long-termism and maintain patience is indeed part of Tarbert's responsibilities as president. However, it is particularly ironic that he has been revealed to have continuously sold CRCL shares since Circle's IPO, cashing out approximately $30 million without ever increasing his holdings. This stark contrast between his public and private actions is especially striking.

Cashing Out Frenzily, Leaving Long-Termism to the Market

The revolving door between politics and business is a classic script for U.S. officials after leaving office. As a pro-cryptocurrency former CFTC chairman, Heath Tarbert joined Circle in July 2023 as Chief Legal Officer and Head of Corporate Affairs. Tarbert's role is clearly to leverage his experience across the U.S. Treasury, CFTC, White House, and Wall Street to facilitate communication between Circle and regulators, accelerate business growth and listing, and promote USDC's integration into the traditional financial system.

Tarbert has also stated that he values Circle's "regulatory-first" approach and hopes to promote the establishment of clear and consistent digital asset rules. In early 2025, he was further promoted to Circle's first president, overseeing legal, compliance, risk, public policy, communications, and international expansion.

From public statements, Tarbert has been one of the most active promoters of Circle's "long-termism" narrative. He repeatedly emphasizes that stablecoins should not only be understood as tools for cryptocurrency trading but as the next generation of payment, settlement, and internet financial infrastructure. The current investments by Circle cannot simply be measured by short-term profits or stock price fluctuations.

However, regarding his personal holdings, he had already established arrangements that were completely contrary to his public stance before Circle went public. On June 4, 2025, the day before Circle set its IPO price and officially listed, Tarbert set up a 10b5-1 trading plan to sell up to 353,290 shares of Circle stock within a year.

Thus, in the 13 months following the IPO, he sold shares for 7 months, totaling over 360,000 shares and cashing out more than $30 million. Notably, on March 2, 2026, Tarbert sold 122,007 shares in a single transaction, worth approximately $11.5 million, the largest of all transactions.

The 10b5-1 plan allows executives to pre-set the timing, quantity, or price conditions for future stock sales without possessing significant non-public information, avoiding insider trading. Most of Tarbert's sales were executed automatically by brokers under such plans, yielding approximately $24.4 million in profits.

Perhaps Tarbert felt that his selling intensity was not strong enough; before the first trading plan was fully completed, he established another 10b5-1 plan on March 10, 2026, preparing to continue selling up to 160,000 shares by the end of this year, including shares obtained through exercising options. Since Circle's IPO, Tarbert has never actively bought company stock on the open market.

In fact, it is quite common for company executives to sell part of their equity and diversify personal assets. However, what has dissatisfied the community is that even after cashing out massively at high stock prices, when the stock price has dropped by about three-quarters, he still emphasizes the importance of long-termism in the market while showing no intention of increasing his holdings in the open market. This inevitably leads people to believe that Tarbert is merely looking to cash out and withdraw, without ever having real confidence in Circle's long-term development.

Mastering the Revolving Door, Joining Citadel Securities 27 Days After Leaving CFTC

In fact, before entering Circle's core management, Tarbert was already adept at monetizing his U.S. political and business resources.

He received early training in law and finance and has held positions in the White House, Senate Banking Committee, and Treasury Department, as well as serving as the head of banking regulation at the international law firm Allen & Overy. During the Trump administration, Tarbert served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Markets, participating in G7, G20, Financial Stability Board, and U.S.-European financial regulatory coordination, and briefly acting as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the Treasury.

In 2019, Trump nominated Tarbert to serve as CFTC Chairman. His nomination faced no significant resistance due to his experience in the Republican administration and his background in banking regulation, international finance, and law. The Senate ultimately confirmed him as chairman with 84 votes in favor and 9 against, with a term originally set to last until April 2024.

After the 2020 presidential election, with the Democrats back in the White House, Tarbert voluntarily stepped down on the day Biden was inaugurated. His public reason was to make way for the new president to choose a permanent chairman, which is a normal power transition for U.S. regulatory agencies after a party change.

However, Tarbert could have continued to serve as a regular commissioner until 2024 but chose to resign from all positions on March 5, 2021. Just 27 days later, he quickly joined Citadel Securities, a leading market maker directly affected by financial regulatory policies, as Chief Legal Officer.

This experience later shaped the public's basic impression of him—highly skilled at entering regulatory systems, accumulating institutional resources, and then transforming those resources into compliance, lobbying, and policy influence capabilities for large financial companies.

From Citadel Securities to Circle, Controversy Begins with the "Revolving Door"

In addition to stepping down from a regulatory position and immediately transitioning to Citadel Securities, the specific timing of Tarbert's "urgent" entry into the company has also raised external doubts.

In early 2021, a large number of retail investors concentrated on buying stocks like GameStop, which were heavily shorted by institutions, driving stock prices to surge sharply, causing some short funds to suffer huge losses. During the height of the market, Robinhood suddenly restricted users from buying GameStop, AMC, and other stocks while still allowing sales, causing related stock prices to plummet. Some investors subsequently accused Robinhood of colluding with Citadel Securities to suppress stock prices, believing that the platform weakened retail buying power by closing the "buy button" to help Wall Street shorts.

In this turmoil, Citadel Securities became a focal point of suspicion. This was partly because it was one of Robinhood's most important order execution partners and sources of order flow payments; on the other hand, its founder Ken Griffin's hedge fund Citadel had just injected capital into Melvin Capital, which had been severely impacted by the GameStop short squeeze. At this time, this leading market maker was facing intense scrutiny from Congress, regulators, and public opinion.

During this sensitive period, Tarbert, who had just left the CFTC, happened to take on the role of Chief Legal Officer at Citadel Securities, responsible for handling legal, compliance, and regulatory affairs. Tarbert understood the operational logic of regulatory agencies, the policy-making process, and Washington connections, while Citadel Securities needed precisely the ability to respond to congressional investigations and potential market structure reforms.

After joining Citadel Securities, Tarbert did not limit himself to traditional legal affairs. In 2023, during his tenure as Chief Legal Officer, Citadel Securities strongly opposed the SEC's proposed retail order auction reform. The SEC aimed to have some retail orders undergo public bidding before execution to increase competition among market makers. Citadel Securities submitted a lengthy opinion, claiming that the SEC's economic analysis contained serious errors and that the reform was an untested "radical experiment" that could harm the execution quality for retail investors.

Similar conflicts of interest also appeared in the cryptocurrency market. In September 2022, Tarbert, as Chief Legal Officer of Citadel Securities, attended a U.S. Senate hearing to support the Digital Commodity Consumer Protection Act, advocating for expanding the CFTC's regulatory authority over the cryptocurrency spot market. At the same time, Citadel Securities had already received $1.15 billion in investments from Sequoia Capital and cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm and publicly stated plans to expand its business into crypto assets.

From a chronological perspective, a former CFTC chairman joining a market maker preparing to enter the cryptocurrency market and then publicly advocating for expanding the CFTC's authority over related markets inevitably raises suspicions: Is he designing public rules as a regulator or helping his potential new employer shape a more favorable market environment in advance?

In 2023, Tarbert left Citadel Securities to join Circle. At the end of 2022, due to regulatory constraints, Circle's planned SAPC listing was aborted. Subsequently, Circle urgently needed an executive well-versed in politics to clear listing obstacles and seek a direct IPO. Two years later, Circle successfully completed its listing, and Tarbert once again became one of the most important external representatives of a financial enterprise highly dependent on regulatory policies.

From the company's perspective, Tarbert is undoubtedly a highly valuable executive. He is familiar with the workings of the regulatory system and adept at mobilizing policies, connections, and market resources, always able to help the company cross critical thresholds in compliance, financing, and market access when needed most.

Throughout Tarbert's career, a consistent theme has been his precise judgment of policy cycles and market windows. What he truly excels at is transforming the credibility, policy resources, and market opportunities accumulated from his regulatory experience into the most valuable professional chips at different stages of his career.

However, as he repeatedly switches identities between regulatory agencies and financial enterprises, cashing out at the right moments, the long-term risks are borne not by him but by those investors who believe in his public narrative.

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