Crypto advocate, lawyer and author of “CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money” J. Christopher Giancarlo will help direct the stablecoin issuer Paxos.
The former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been a longtime advocate of crypto, which was one of the reasons behind his French knighthood.

Paxos has added J. Christopher Giancarlo, a former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) who has been a public advocate for the cryptocurrency sector, to its board of directors, the company told CoinDesk.

Giancarlo joins Paxos as the stablecoin issuer and infrastructure platform has been expanding its array of tokens – including as the issuer of PayPal's (PYUSD) – as well as reaching beyond Ethereum last year to add the Solana blockchain. On the regulatory front, Paxos Trust is overseen by the New York Department of Financial Services, which last year took issue with the vulnerabilities of its Binance USD (BUSD) to abuse, though that token relationship was severed.

Giancarlo – who's joining another one-time Washington insider, former Sen. Bill Bradley on the board – wrote the book “CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money” and also started the Digital Dollar Project to explore the possibility of a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC).

"He has been at the forefront of advocating for blockchain to improve the infrastructure of our financial system," Charles Cascarilla, CEO and co-founder of Paxos, said in a statement. "His insights will support us as we expand our position as a leader in regulated digital asset market structure and stablecoin innovation."

Giancarlo is a lawyer at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and co-chair of its digital works practice. His crypto connections were also referenced when Giancarlo was knighted in 2022 as a French chevalier, with the French ambassador to the U.S. noting the former regulator's "understanding of financial markets and the potentials of crypto finance."

"Paxos has established itself as the leader in bridging traditional and digital asset markets by introducing regulated solutions that are safe for institutions and consumers," Giancarlo said in a statement. "I’m honored to join Paxos's board and be a part of innovation in the financial sector."

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Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.