Empower Oversight, Consensys, Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton
Consensys has a good reputation in the XRP world. Empower Oversight, a US government watchdog that monitors the federal budget, sent a request to FOIA in March 2024 for communication records of SEC. Empower Oversight raised concerns about possible ethics violations at the SEC. highlighted Concerns about the former SEC chair Jay Clayton
Empower Oversight reported that Jay Clayton had joined the crypto hedge fund One River Asset Management following his departure from SEC. One River Asset Management is a crypto-hedge fund that targets BTC and ETH. Clayton, who was also the SEC chair at the time of his appointment as advisor to Electric Capital, made a significant move. Electric Capital invested in Consensys and thus tied SEC chair Clayton to Ethereum.
Consensys vs. SEC could reveal the skeletons in the SEC’s closet and influence SEC decisions regarding the Programmatic Sales of XRP decision.
William Hinman, former Director of Division of Corporation Finance at the SEC (formerly) said in 2018 that Bitcoin is (BTCEthereum (ETH() are not securities. Hinman’s connection to Simpson Thacher was the main issue surrounding his speech. Simpson Thacher is part of Enterprise Ethereum, a group which promotes Enterprise Ethereum.
Hinman went back to Simpson Thacher after leaving the SEC. Hinman met with Simpson Thacher while at the SEC despite being warned by the SEC’s ethics division.
Empower Oversight asserts that Jay Clayton publically affirmed Hinman’s statement that ETH was not a financial instrument.