Circle President and former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Heath Tarbert has come under fresh criticism after a report said he kept selling CRCL shares after the company’s IPO, cashing out roughly $30 million while publicly telling investors to stay focused on the long term.
On July 14, Tarbert appeared on FOX Business and was asked what he would say to investors who bought Circle shares near the stock’s all-time high. His answer, as cited in the report, was that Circle is focused on long-term development and that the stock price will eventually speak for itself. That message landed against a weak backdrop for the company’s shares. Mizuho Securities USA LLC recently cut its rating on Circle to “underperform” from “neutral” and set a $50 price target, described in the report as the lowest target on Wall Street.
The article argues that the gap between Tarbert’s public message and his personal trading record has become hard to ignore. It says that since Circle completed its IPO, Tarbert has continued to dispose of CRCL stock, with total proceeds of more than $30 million and no open-market purchases.
Share sales after the IPO
Tarbert joined Circle in July 2023 as chief legal officer and head of corporate affairs. The report says the company brought him in to use his experience across the Treasury Department, the CFTC, the White House and Wall Street to help with regulatory engagement, business growth, its public listing effort and the push to bring USDC deeper into traditional finance.
Tarbert had also publicly embraced Circle’s “regulation-first” approach and said he wanted to help build clear and consistent digital asset rules. In early 2025, he was promoted to become Circle’s first president, taking charge of legal, compliance, risk, public policy, communications and international expansion.
In public remarks, Tarbert was one of the company’s most visible advocates for a long-term case around stablecoins. He said they should not be seen only as crypto trading tools, but as infrastructure for the next generation of payments, settlement and internet finance. The report says that stance sat awkwardly with the way he handled his own holdings.
According to the article, Tarbert adopted a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan on June 4, 2025, one day before Circle finalized its IPO pricing and listed its shares. The plan allowed for the sale of as many as 353,290 Circle shares over one year.
Over the 13 months after Circle went public, the report says Tarbert sold stock in seven months. In total, he disposed of more than 360,000 shares for more than $30 million. The biggest single transaction came on March 2, 2026, when he sold 122,007 shares worth about $11.5 million.
The article notes that 10b5-1 plans let corporate executives preset the timing, volume or price conditions of future stock sales when they are not in possession of material nonpublic information. That structure is intended to reduce the risk of trades being made on inside information. Most of Tarbert’s sales were carried out automatically by a broker under those plans, and the report says the profit from those transactions was about $24.4 million.
Before the first plan had fully run its course, Tarbert set up another 10b5-1 plan on March 10, 2026. Under that plan, he could sell up to 160,000 more shares by the end of the year, including stock obtained through option exercises. The article says he has not bought Circle shares in the open market at any point since the IPO.
The report acknowledges that it is common for senior executives to sell part of their holdings and diversify personal wealth. The criticism, it says, centers on the contrast between large-scale selling at higher stock levels and Tarbert’s later calls for patience and long-term conviction after the shares had fallen by about three-quarters.
From the CFTC to Citadel Securities
Before moving into Circle’s top ranks, Tarbert had already built a career that moved repeatedly between public office and major financial institutions. He trained in law and finance and held roles in the White House, the Senate Banking Committee and the Treasury Department. He also served as head of bank regulatory practice at Allen & Overy.
During the Trump administration, Tarbert served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for international markets, taking part in work tied to the G7, the G20, the Financial Stability Board and transatlantic regulatory coordination. He also at one point acted as under secretary for international affairs.
Trump nominated Tarbert to chair the CFTC in 2019. The Senate confirmed him by a vote of 84 to 9, and his term was originally set to run until April 2024. After Democrats returned to the White House following the 2020 election, Tarbert stepped down as chair on the day Joe Biden took office, saying he wanted to make way for a permanent pick by the new president.
The article says he could have remained at the agency as a commissioner until 2024, but resigned from all positions on March 5, 2021. Twenty-seven days later, he joined Citadel Securities as chief legal officer.
That move helped shape an image of Tarbert as someone highly skilled at entering the regulatory system, building institutional capital and then converting that experience into compliance, lobbying and policy influence for large financial firms.
A sensitive hire during the GameStop saga
The timing of Tarbert’s move to Citadel Securities drew attention of its own. In early 2021, retail traders piled into GameStop and other stocks that had been heavily shorted by institutions, sending prices sharply higher and inflicting major losses on some hedge funds. At the height of the frenzy, Robinhood restricted purchases of GameStop, AMC and other names while still allowing sales, and those stocks then fell sharply.
Some investors later accused Robinhood and Citadel Securities of working together to push prices lower. The claim was that shutting off the “buy button” weakened retail demand and helped relieve pressure on Wall Street short sellers. Citadel Securities became a focal point because it was one of Robinhood’s most important order execution firms and payment-for-order-flow counterparties. At the same time, hedge fund Citadel, founded by Ken Griffin, had just invested in Melvin Capital after the fund was hit by the GameStop squeeze.
Against that backdrop, Tarbert arrived at Citadel Securities as chief legal officer, taking responsibility for legal, compliance and regulatory matters. The report says his understanding of how regulators operate, how policy is made and how Washington works was exactly what the market maker needed while facing congressional scrutiny and possible market-structure reform.
Regulatory battles at Citadel and later at Circle
Tarbert’s role at Citadel Securities extended beyond routine legal work. In 2023, while he was chief legal officer, the firm strongly opposed a Securities and Exchange Commission proposal on retail order auctions. The SEC wanted some retail orders exposed to open competition before execution to increase rivalry among market makers. Citadel Securities submitted lengthy comments saying the SEC’s economic analysis was seriously flawed and that the proposal amounted to an untested “radical experiment” that could hurt execution quality for retail investors.
The report says similar questions about overlapping interests appeared in crypto as well. In September 2022, Tarbert testified before the U.S. Senate as Citadel Securities’ chief legal officer in support of the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, arguing for broader CFTC authority over the crypto spot market. At the same time, Citadel Securities had already raised $1.15 billion from Sequoia Capital and crypto investment firm Paradigm and had said publicly that it planned to expand into digital assets.
Viewed in sequence, the article argues, a former CFTC chair joined a market maker preparing to enter crypto and then publicly supported a broader CFTC role over that market. That chronology has fueled outside questions over whether he was speaking as a former regulator concerned with public rules or helping shape a more favorable structure for a current or future employer.
Tarbert left Citadel Securities in 2023 and joined Circle. The report notes that Circle’s SPAC listing plan had collapsed at the end of 2022 because of the regulatory environment. The company then needed a senior executive with deep political and regulatory experience to help clear the path for a direct IPO. Two years later, Circle completed that listing, and Tarbert again emerged as one of the key public-facing executives at a financial company whose business is heavily affected by regulatory policy.
From the company’s perspective, the article says, Tarbert has been a valuable executive because he understands the machinery of regulation and knows how to bring policy relationships and market resources to bear when a business needs help with compliance, fundraising and market access.
Still, the report closes on the tension that now defines the criticism around him. It says Tarbert’s career has been marked by a sharp sense of political cycles and market timing. But when he moves between regulatory office and private finance, and realizes gains at the right moment, the long-term risk is not carried by him. It is carried by investors who took his public narrative at face value.