Crypto CEOs to Testify Before House Financial Services Committee
FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Bitfury’s Brian Brooks and Circle’s Jeremy Allaire are among the executives who will speak at the Dec. 8 hearing.

CEOs from six major cryptocurrency companies will testify at a Dec. 8 hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) announced Wednesday.
- FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Circle’s Jeremy Allaire, Bitfury’s Brian Brooks, Paxos’ Charles Cascarilla, Stellar Development Foundation’s Denelle Dixon and Coinbase’s Alesia Haas will speak at the session entitled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States.”
- Waters has been an outspoken critic of crypto largely because of its unregulated nature.
- In June, she announced that she was forming a group of Democrat House members to tackle growing concerns about cryptocurrency.
- Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the crypto derivatives exchange FTX, said in September that tighter regulation of crypto exchanges would have positive effects for investors.
- Brooks, who took over as CEO of the mining company Bitfury in November, was the acting comptroller of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator for U.S. national banks, between May 2020 and January 2021. He also had a brief stint as CEO of the crypto exchange Binance’s U.S. arm.
Read more: Crypto Learns to Play the DC Influence Game
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Pudgy Penguins: A New Blueprint for Tokenized Culture

Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
What to know:
Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
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SEC clarifies rules for tokenized stocks, tightening scrutiny on synthetic equity

The agency says issuer approval is required for true tokenized ownership, warning that many stock tokens sold to retail investors provide only indirect or synthetic exposure.
What to know:
- The Securities and Exchange Commission issued new guidance clarifying that tokenized stocks are subject to existing securities and derivatives rules, regardless of whether they are recorded on a blockchain.
- The agency drew a sharp line between issuer-sponsored tokenized securities, which can represent true equity ownership, and third-party products that typically provide only synthetic exposure or custodial entitlements.
- Regulators signaled they aim to curb the spread of synthetic equity products to retail investors while encouraging issuer-approved, fully regulated tokenization structures.











