Booo:
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he will nominate Paul Atkins, a former federal regulator who now advises financial firms and cryptocurrency companies, to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The choice foreshadowed a significant political shift for Washington’s leading cop on Wall Street, signaling that the SEC under Republican control is likely to pursue a deregulatory agenda while easing up on some of its enforcement activities.
It also underscored Trump’s aggressive courtship of a crypto industry he once derided as a “scam,” months after executives and investors backed his campaign financially in the hopes of securing a more favorable regulatory environment in Washington.
“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media network. “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”
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If confirmed by the Senate, Atkins would assume the helm of one of the nation’s leading watchdog agencies, with a vast mandate to protect investors, monitor markets and pursue fraud. It would mark his second major stint at the SEC, where Atkins served as a Republican commissioner 16 years ago — a term from 2002 to 2008 that concluded before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
At the time, Atkins emerged as an outspoken critic of the SEC’s approach to cracking down on corporate misdeeds, and he opposed large penalties levied against companies that agreed to settle fraud charges. Supporters of these fines said they deterred wrongdoing, but Atkins argued they impacted stock prices and punished shareholders, who have already been victimized by a company’s actions.
Atkins currently leads Patomak Global Partners, a consultancy, where his clients include financial services firms under the SEC’s watch. He also serves as a co-chair of the Token Alliance, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce — a lobbying group — and advises the crypto industry on regulation globally.
“If the government, if the SEC, were more accommodating, and would deal 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 said on a podcast last year.
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Atkins would replace the SEC’s current chairman, Gary Gensler, whose tenure under President Joe Biden has been marked by a broad — and, to some, unfair — crackdown on crypto giants.
In recent years, the SEC under Gensler has brought fraud cases involving a wave of crypto firms, including FTX, once the third-largest crypto exchange. It has also sparred in court with Coinbase and Kraken, two other trading platforms, and Ripple, which launched the XRP token, for allegedly failing to adhere to federal law requiring registration of their offerings — charges they each deny.
In a bid to woo the crypto industry, Trump this summer announced at a widely attended crypto conference that he would “fire” Gensler, which drew boisterous applause from the crowd of thousands, many sporting “make bitcoin great again” hats modeled after Trump’s campaign slogan.
Since the election, though, Gensler has announced he would resign his SEC post — paving the way for the incoming president to begin identifying a range of pro-crypto candidates to lead the SEC and other key agencies that oversee the industry.
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he will nominate Paul Atkins, a former federal regulator who now advises financial firms and cryptocurrency companies, to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The choice foreshadowed a significant political shift for Washington’s leading cop on Wall Street, signaling that the SEC under Republican control is likely to pursue a deregulatory agenda while easing up on some of its enforcement activities.
It also underscored Trump’s aggressive courtship of a crypto industry he once derided as a “scam,” months after executives and investors backed his campaign financially in the hopes of securing a more favorable regulatory environment in Washington.
“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media network. “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”
ADVERTISING
If confirmed by the Senate, Atkins would assume the helm of one of the nation’s leading watchdog agencies, with a vast mandate to protect investors, monitor markets and pursue fraud. It would mark his second major stint at the SEC, where Atkins served as a Republican commissioner 16 years ago — a term from 2002 to 2008 that concluded before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
At the time, Atkins emerged as an outspoken critic of the SEC’s approach to cracking down on corporate misdeeds, and he opposed large penalties levied against companies that agreed to settle fraud charges. Supporters of these fines said they deterred wrongdoing, but Atkins argued they impacted stock prices and punished shareholders, who have already been victimized by a company’s actions.
Atkins currently leads Patomak Global Partners, a consultancy, where his clients include financial services firms under the SEC’s watch. He also serves as a co-chair of the Token Alliance, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce — a lobbying group — and advises the crypto industry on regulation globally.
“If the government, if the SEC, were more accommodating, and would deal 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 said on a podcast last year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi..._magnet-trump-presidency_inline_collection_10
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli..._magnet-trump-presidency_inline_collection_13
Atkins would replace the SEC’s current chairman, Gary Gensler, whose tenure under President Joe Biden has been marked by a broad — and, to some, unfair — crackdown on crypto giants.
In recent years, the SEC under Gensler has brought fraud cases involving a wave of crypto firms, including FTX, once the third-largest crypto exchange. It has also sparred in court with Coinbase and Kraken, two other trading platforms, and Ripple, which launched the XRP token, for allegedly failing to adhere to federal law requiring registration of their offerings — charges they each deny.
In a bid to woo the crypto industry, Trump this summer announced at a widely attended crypto conference that he would “fire” Gensler, which drew boisterous applause from the crowd of thousands, many sporting “make bitcoin great again” hats modeled after Trump’s campaign slogan.
Since the election, though, Gensler has announced he would resign his SEC post — paving the way for the incoming president to begin identifying a range of pro-crypto candidates to lead the SEC and other key agencies that oversee the industry.
