President-elect Donald Trump has tapped pro-crypto businessman and former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins as the next chair of the regulatory agency under his administration, fulfilling his promise to replace current chair Gary Gensler and delighting the crypto industry.
Here’s what we know about Atkins and the potential changes he could bring to the crypto industry if he’s confirmed as expected by Congress in 2025.
From SEC to Patomak and back again
Atkins served as a Republican SEC commissioner from July 2002 to August 2008, having been appointed to the role under George W. Bush.
Back then he was already pro-innovation and investment and against red tape:
“[The SEC] must not price those very investors out of our markets through burdensome regulations or eat up the fruits of their investments through nonsensical mandates,” Atkins said in a 2007 speech to the Corporate Directors Forum.
According to US legal firm Anderson PC, Atkins was known for emphasizing “proportionality” in enforcement actions, advising against massive fines for corporations based on individual wrongdoing and focusing on complex and nuanced cases instead of prioritizing a high number of enforcement actions.
“Under his leadership, the SEC may move away from aggressive tactics that prioritize headline-grabbing penalties over substantive outcomes,” wrote Anderson lawyers.
Speaking on the Unchained podcast this week, Digital Chamber President Cody Carbone said one of the most promising things about Atkins is his pre-existing familiarity with the current SEC staff, including current Republican SEC Commissioners Hester “Crypto Mom” Peirce and Mark Uyeda.
Both Peirce and Uyeda were staffers for Atkins during his six-year stint at the agency.
“When we look at how the commission is going to work moving forward, they have familiarity. They’ve already rolled up their sleeves and been in the war together,” said Carbone.
After leaving the SEC, Atkins founded the financial sector consultancy firm Patomak Global Partners in 2009. Patomak specializes in regulatory advice, risk compliance services and enforcement and litigation support.
Notably, Patomak signed Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-defunct exchange FTX as a client in January 2022, around 10 months before the exchange imploded.
Speaking on a podcast in 2023, Atkins said the only reason the FTX crisis became an “international debacle” was because the US didn’t make clear enough rules to accommodate digital assets. However, he conceded that Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent activities were the primary cause of the collapse.
Since 2017, Atkins has served as the co-chair of the Token Alliance, a crypto lobbying group for the Chamber of Digital Commerce which aims to introduce clear regulations and promote mainstream adoption of crypto assets.
He has been a staunch advocate of digital assets and innovation, speaking out against the Gensler-led SEC’s “regulation-by-enforcement” approach to the crypto industry on several occasions.
In 2019, Atkins testified before Congress on restructuring the SEC to balance investor protection with reducing regulatory burdens on emerging industries.
SEC turnover continues
While Trump has nominated Atkins as the next SEC chair, it’s not yet a done deal. Congress and the Senate can vote against confirming a Presidential nomination, and that may well happen with some of Trump’s more controversial picks.
However, Carbone expects Atkins’ nomination to be confirmed in March, depending on how quickly the Senate Banking Committee can move through nominations for other departments and agencies.
The SEC features a board of five commissioners. At present, the list of SEC commissioners includes two Republicans — Peirce and Uyeda — and three Democrats, Caroline Crenshaw, Gary Gensler and Jaime Lizarraga.
However, both Gensler and Lizarraga have recently announced that they will be leaving the agency in January.
Meanwhile, Crenshaw — a crypto-critical commissioner who stood against the approval of Bitcoin ETFs — has just had her renomination vote postponed indefinitely, leaving her role at the agency up in the air.
The SEC is set to have a three-person Republican SEC majority under the new administration following Trump’s inauguration next year. Some have suggested that Trump may even break with protocol and nominate a fourth Republican commissioner to replace Lizarraga; however, that’s pure speculation at this stage.
What could Atkins’ reign look like for crypto regulation?
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Charlyn Ho, the founder of Rikka Group, said that Atkins will undoubtedly create “a lot of change” in the way the crypto industry is regulated, but it’s not going to happen all at once.
Ho believes it’s unlikely that the United States will pursue a similar course to Europe in introducing an overarching regulatory regime like Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Instead, she expects the Atkins-led SEC to be more focused on providing direction and removing regulatory roadblocks.
“I would hazard a guess that Trump and Atkins are probably opposed to creating new regulations, but rather increasing the clarity as to where the crypto industry can operate.”
That said, there are numerous crypto bills already up for consideration including stablecoin legislation and FIT 21, which provides a regulatory framework for crypto and has already passed the House of Representatives.
Whatever happens, Atkins is unlikely to follow his predecessor Gensler’s approach, which has been criticized for being overly aggressive to crypto regulation and for routinely overstepping the SEC’s congressional mandate and enacting “regulation by enforcement.”
“The common theme in lawsuits like Coinbase and Ripple is that the SEC is overstepping its bounds,” she said.
“Technically, Congress is supposed to pass laws. Those laws delegate the authority to executive agencies like the SEC to interpret, but they are only supposed to interpret within the parameters that were delegated,” Ho said.
Speaking on the Free The People podcast on Feb. 23 last year, Atkins said that if the SEC had been less combative, there would’ve been more opportunity for industry growth in the US.
“If the agency had been more accommodating and would deal straightforwardly with these various firms, I think it would be a lot better to have things happen here in the United States rather than outside,” Atkins said, citing the $4.3 billion fine that Binance was forced to pay as a reason why many crypto firms choose to remain outside the US.
On the same podcast, Atkins also came out in support of Commissioner Peirce’s Token Safe Harbor Act — a bill that was re-introduced in 2021 — that would give crypto developers a grace period before they’re legally required to register with the SEC.
A day-one Atkins overhaul is unlikely
Even though Atkins is clearly pro-crypto, Ho warned that industry pundits expecting a quick overhaul of the rules may be getting ahead of themselves.
“There’s still a precedent set by Gensler for him to follow and just because a new commissioner is named, it doesn’t mean all the legal work and precedent that has come out previously is just gone,” Ho said.
Looking at the swathe of existing lawsuits from the SEC, including those against firms like Kraken, Coinbase, Ripple and others, Ho said neither Atkins nor the agency are capable of simply dropping everything and hammering a pro-crypto position immediately.
“If Atkins wants to change the SEC’s position, he wouldn’t just be able to declare it as so. They would have to go through the legal process and have some justification in order to alter their claims.
“If they’re the plaintiff, they could just drop the lawsuit entirely. But if they’re in the middle of a process, then the commissioner doesn’t have unfettered discretion to completely change everything in that process.”
“He would still be bound by certain things.”
