Circle Internet Group named Dante Disparte, its chief strategy officer and head of global policy and operations, as vice chairman for strategy and global affairs, the first person to hold a vice chairman title at the company, in a press release on Friday. Mandeep Walia, chief compliance and risk officer, adds the role of chief operating officer.
Both joined the USDC issuer in the first half of 2021. The release credits Disparte with helping get the GENIUS Act, the first US federal law for payment stablecoins, signed, and with leading Circle’s work on the US bank regulator’s final rules, due in January 2027.
The business model, in one line: Circle earns most of its money from the interest on the reserves behind USDC, which brought in $657.6 million of its $865 million in third-quarter revenue and reserve income, as its third-quarter results showed. That makes regulators’ trust, the theme of Friday’s announcement, a commercial asset as much as a legal one.
What changes
Walia’s new job covers the operating side of the company, “from payments and partner support to fraud prevention and privacy”, the release says. Circle says compliance and risk “will remain independent”, with direct lines to its board.
“Circle is entering its next chapter with greater scale and greater responsibility, and our leadership has to match both,” said Heath Tarbert, Circle’s president.
The skeptics’ reading
The release itself anticipates the obvious question: how compliance stays independent when the same executive also runs operations. Circle’s answer is the board reporting line. The release does not say who Walia’s operations teams report to, and it gives no start date and no pay terms.
The changes come nine days after Circle disclosed a cut of about 5% of its staff with its quarterly results. Separately, JPMorgan’s 13F shows the bank’s Circle stake fell 96% in the third quarter, a snapshot that does not say why.
What’s next
The OCC rules that Disparte worked on take effect in January. For the basics on the product, see what a dollar stablecoin is.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.