Trump to appoint Paul Atkins, a cryptocurrency advocate, for SEC chair

President-elect Donald Trump introduced Wednesday that he intends to appoint cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Trade Fee.

Trump mentioned Atkins, the CEO of Patomak Companions and a former SEC commissioner, was a “confirmed chief for widespread sense rules.” Within the years since leaving the SEC, Atkins has made the case towards an excessive amount of market regulation.

“He believes within the promise of sturdy, revolutionary capital markets which can be conscious of the wants of Traders, & that present capital to make our Economic system the perfect within the World. He additionally acknowledges that digital property & different improvements are essential to Making America Better than Ever Earlier than,” Trump wrote on Reality Social.

The fee oversees U.S. securities markets and investments and is at present led by Gary Gensler, who has been main the U.S. authorities’s crackdown on the crypto trade. Gensler, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, introduced final month that he can be stepping down from his put up on the day that Trump is inaugurated — Jan. 20, 2025.

Trump, as soon as a crypto skeptic, had pledged to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet” and create a “strategic reserve” of bitcoin. Cash has poured into crypto property since he gained. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency, is now above $95,000. And shares in crypto platform Coinbase have surged greater than 70% for the reason that election.

Paul Grewal, chief authorized officer of Coinbase, congratulated Atkins in a put up on X.

“We admire his dedication to stability in regulating U.S. securities markets and stay up for his recent management at (the SEC),” Grewal wrote. “It is sorely wanted and can’t come a day too quickly.”

Congressman Brad Sherman, a California Democrat and a senior member of the Home Monetary Providers Committee, mentioned he worries Atkins wouldn’t sufficiently regulate cryptocurrencies as SEC chair.

“He’d in all probability take the place that no cryptocurrency is a safety, and therefore no change that offers with crypto is a securities change,” Sherman mentioned. “The chance to defraud buyers can be there in a really vital approach.”

Atkins started his profession as a lawyer and has an extended historical past working within the monetary markets sector, each in authorities and personal apply. Within the Nineteen Nineties, he labored on the staffs of two former SEC chairmen, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt.

His work as an SEC commissioner began in 2002, a time when the fallout from company scandals at Enron and WorldCom had turned up the warmth on Wall Avenue and its authorities regulators.

Atkins was broadly thought of essentially the most conservative member of the SEC throughout his tenure on the company and was recognized to have a powerful free-market bent. As a commissioner, he referred to as for higher transparency in and evaluation of the prices and advantages of recent SEC guidelines.

He additionally emphasised investor training and elevated enforcement efforts towards those that steal from buyers over the web, manipulate markets, interact in Ponzi schemes and different forms of fraud.

On the similar time, Atkins objected to stiff penalties imposed on corporations accused of fraudulent conduct, contending that they didn’t deter crime. He brought about a stir in the summertime of 2006 when he mentioned the apply of granting inventory choices to executives earlier than the disclosure of reports that was sure to extend the share value didn’t represent insider buying and selling.

U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican and chairman of the Home Monetary Providers Committee, mentioned Atkins has the expertise wanted to “restore religion within the SEC.”

“I am assured his management will result in readability for the digital asset ecosystem and guarantee U.S. capital markets stay the envy of the world,” McHenry posted on X.

Atkins already has some expertise working for Trump. Throughout Trump’s first time period, Atkins was a member of the President’s Strategic and Coverage Discussion board, an advisory group of greater than a dozen CEOs and enterprise leaders who provided enter on create jobs and velocity financial progress.

In 2017, Atkins joined the Token Alliance, a cryptocurrency advocacy group.

Crypto trade gamers welcomed Trump’s victory within the hopes that he would push by means of legislative and regulatory adjustments that they’ve lengthy lobbied for.

Trump himself has launched World Liberty Monetary, a brand new enterprise with relations to commerce cryptocurrencies.