President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to crypto outlet Unchained. Assuming Atkins accepts the offer, crypto enthusiasts would have plenty of reason to rejoice.
Atkins may not be as familiar a name to the general public as his predecessor, Gary Gensler. But Atkins has a long history with the SEC—and could have a material impact on the U.S.’s approach to finance.
The nominee was a commissioner of the SEC under the George W. Bush administration in the early 2000s. He was known for his kindness to staff, according to a former colleague who spoke to Unchained. He came to the SEC after working as a Wall Street lawyer in the 1980s, and moved to Washington, D.C., when his wife refused to move to New York City. Atkins’s wife has helped shape her husband’s politics. She was a libertarian, and her beliefs helped change Atkins’s.
But it’s Atkins’s post-politics career that could mark the biggest change for the SEC. After leaving the SEC in the 2000s, he set up his own consultancy, Patomak Global Partners, which worked in the digital finance sector with clients. And since 2017, Atkins was cochair of the Token Alliance, an industry-led initiative overseen by the Chamber of Digital Commerce, which represents the crypto sector’s interests.
“I think we’re at the beginning of hopefully a paradigm shift [toward crypto],” Atkins &ab_channel=FreethePeople">told podcaster Matt Kibbe in 2023. “If the government and the SEC were more accommodating and would deal more straightforwardly with these various [crypto] firms, I think it would be a lot better to have things happen here in the United States rather than outside.”
Atkins added in that conversation with Kibbe that the SEC’s job should be to have its “ear to the ground” on crypto to “enable markets to flourish because if it challenges incumbents and it helps to bring down costs for investors and people who are trying to raise capital, that’s the reason we have financial markets.” Atkins has previously testified in front of Congress about the benefits of reducing regulations on crypto.
Investor Mario Nawfal said on X that Atkins’s nomination would be “a massive win for the crypto industry,” and would signal “a new chapter for fairer, industry-driven policies.”
Gensler’s stint as SEC chair has been typified by an opposition to crypto development and adoption, designed to try and protect U.S. consumers from losing their money in investments, thanks to crypto’s sometimes yo-yo reputation. But Atkins was one of a slate of short-listed candidates who appeared to mark a change from the current SEC approach under Gensler.
Writing before Atkins’s appointment was announced, Owen Lau, executive director and senior analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., said in a report: “The ultimate choice for the SEC chair will rest on how big of a problem President-elect Trump sees in the SEC, and how much change he intends to make. Based on the names being floated around, we believe the setup is favorable to crypto.” The choice of Atkins suggests that the setup will indeed be quite favorable—and that could have a big impact on all of us.
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