President-elect Donald Trump picked a cryptocurrency-friendly face to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission. The move to nominate former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins would fulfill a campaign promise made to the crypto community.
Atkins served as SEC commissioner under President George W. Bush. In the early 1990s, he was on the staff of two former SEC chairs, Richard Breeden and Arthur Levitt, a Republican and Democrat, respectively.
Atkins founded Patomak Global Partners, an advisory firm that works with banks and investment firms on regulation and compliance.
“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”
Aside from banks and investment firms, Patomak Global Partners recently started advising clients on crypto-related issues. Atkins is touted as a cryptocurrency advocate who favors looser regulation. As co-chair of the Digital Chamber of Commerce’s Token Alliance, Atkins helped draft best practices for crypto trading platforms.
“Paul Atkins‘ engagement with crypto goes back many years as an advocate for blockchain and digital assets,” former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Chris Giancarlo, who works with Atkins at the Token Alliance, told Straight Arrow News in an email. “As SEC Chairman, he will embrace technological innovation, including digital network finance, after years of SEC hostility and regulation by enforcement. Paul Atkins will return the SEC to its proper role in enabling capital formation and powering American economic growth.”
Trump embraced cryptocurrency in the last few months of the election and gave a keynote address at Bitcoin2024. During that speech, he promised to fire current SEC Chair Gary Gensler and nominate someone more friendly to Bitcoin.
Gensler has since announced he would step down from his role the day Trump is inaugurated.
The biggest criticism of Gensler’s crypto regulations is that he treats most coins as securities rather than commodities or digital currencies, which would be out of the SEC’s purview. In one of the most high-profile actions against the industry, Gensler’s SEC accused crypto exchange Coinbase of failing to register as a securities broker and allowing unregistered assets to be sold on the platform.
