- Ex-SEC Chair Jay Clayton, who left the US securities watchdog in December 2020, joins Electric Capital as an advisor.
- Electric Capital has also tapped Kevin Warsh, a former Federel Reserve Board of Governors member and Meta Platforms’ Pratiti Raychoudhury.
- Crypto is seeing a new trend with these kind of appointments and hires.
Jay Clayton, a former US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair, has joined Electric Capital as an advisor, the venture firm announced on Wednesday.
The firm, which focuses on early-stage investments in the crypto, blockchain, and fintech sectors, also named two other high-profile individuals to its advisory team – former Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Kevin Warsh aand Meta VP and Head of Research Pratiti Raychoudhury.
According to Electric Capital, the three are expected to support the firms’ Web3 founders, providing regulatory insight among other aspects as the team looks to build scalable crypto-enabled products eying billions of users.
Electric Capital recently announced a new capital injection of $1 billion, which the company plans to invest in early-stage Web3 projects whose investment size is between $1 million and $5 million. The firm has investments in several top crypto platforms, including Bitwise, dYdX, NEAR, Hashflow, and Magic Eden.
A new trend in crypto
Electric Capital’s appointment of Jay Clayton as part as an advisory team adds to a trend that has seen many former regulators and other top government officials jump into the crypto space. These appointments have increased over the past year, largely amid the sector’s push for regulatory clarity.
The moves have also come amid growing attention on crypto from across the global regulatory community.
Among those to join projects in the industry include Brian Quintenz, a former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner. Quintenz is currently an advisor at Andreessen Horowitz.
Crypto platform Bitfury also tapped Brian Brooks, a former regulator at the Comptroller of the Currency, while former UK chancellor Lord Philip Hammond joined crypto startup Copper as an advisor in 2021.