Imagine the price action if Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler joined the board of a crypto project.
Well, maybe that’s not plausible. But crypto traders have got themselves fired up over rumors that a current crypto board member could be in the frame to replace Gensler at the SEC.
The price of Hedera’s HBAR token shot up 29% in the past day on rumors that board member Brian Brooks, who was briefly CEO of Binance.US, has landed himself on the shortlist to take over as head of the SEC. At the time of writing, HBAR is changing hands for $0.1435, according to CoinGecko data. It has managed to climb 159% in the past week, but is still nowhere near its September 2021 all-time high of $0.5692.
The SEC rumor surfaced in a message on Twitter from a Fox Business journalist, who said an unnamed source told her that Brooks is on the list for “various financial agency roles besides the CFTC.
The rumor hasn’t been confirmed, and Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
Brooks is an American lawyer, banker, and most recently member of the board at Hedera’s HBAR Foundation. He’s also a former government official, although it was a very short tenure.
He succeeded Joseph Otting as the Acting Comptroller of the Currency from May 29, 2020 until January 14, 2021. He didn’t land a full 5-year term, despite President Trump nominating him twice during his first term.
At the time, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH)—who it should be noted just lost his seat—were vocal in saying that Brooks would too heavily favor corporate interests and cryptocurrency firms.
“Shortly after former Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks left the OCC to join Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, several nontraditional firms that specialize in digital and cryptocurrency activities—including Paxos, Protego, and Anchorage—received conditional national trust charters from the OCC,” Brown wrote in a letter.
HBAR had already been riding high after Canary Capital filed an S-1 with the SEC to offer its Canary HBAR ETF. Canary Capital is a U.S.-based digital assets investment firm founded by Steven McClurg, formerly of Valkyrie.
Canary has been plenty busy with its crypto exchange-traded product filings this year. The firm has also submitted S-1 registrations to offer investors Litecoin and Solana ETFs.
