Paul Atkins, the former member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that President Donald Trump has tapped to run the agency, assured a different direction for the agency on crypto from the last four years, though he wasn’t pressed with big-picture digital assets questions during a Thursday confirmation hearing.
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Now that Trump has secured the cabinet-level echelon of his government, the White House is working on shepherding top agency chiefs through the Senate confirmation process. While many of the crypto headlines are coming from the administration and Congress these days, those running the regulatory agencies will ultimately be the ones writing the regulations the industry will have to conform with.
Atkins is seeking to be the successor of ex-Chair Gary Gensler, whose years at the agency established him as the digital assets sector’s most prominent nemesis. But Trump’s nominee is already positioning himself in stark contrast to Gensler, who criticized the industry’s history with swindlers and contended that current securities law was sufficient to treat much of the space as if it were in active violation of registration requirements.
“A top priority of my chairmanship will be to work with my fellow commissioners and Congress to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent, and principled approach,” Atkins said in his prepared testimony for Thursday.
Senator Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, said Atkins will “provide long-overdue clarity for digital assets.”
But even before the hearing began, Atkins was being slammed by Senator Elizabether Warren, the Massachusetts lawmaker who is the committee’s ranking Democrat, who registered doubt about his ability to be impartial to the digital assets sector he’s served as an adviser.
At the hearing table beside Atkins, Gould made his case for taking over the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator for national banks. The OCC has been a significant player in the digital assets sector’s campaign against U.S. banking oversight that’s pressured banks to keep the industry at an arm’s length. Crypto firms and insiders have struggled to maintain banking relationships and have argued that the regulators authored that “debanking” strain.
The first question to Gould was on that situation, with Scott asking whether he’d commit to reversing that previous stance, to which Gould responded, “absolutely.”
For the crypto industry, Atkins’ responses on crypto matters are potentially more urgent. But he wasn’t questioned on his views about next steps for cryptocurrency oversight, nor about the legislative efforts poised to remake U.S. crypto policy.
At one point, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana raised the topic of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who he said looks like a “fourth runner-up in a John Belushi lookalike contest,” and asked Atkins whether the SEC appropriately looked into SBF’s parents for their involvement in his fraudulent activities.
“I look forward to getting to the SEC to find out what happened,” Atkins said. “Like you, I’m concerned about those reports.”
But Kennedy took it further, suggesting a lack of accountability that signals “two standards for law and punishment” in the U.S.
“I don’t think the SEC has done a damn thing,” Kennedy said. “They’re crooks!” he shouted. “And I expect the SEC to do something about it.”
Few other senators delved into wider crypto matters, and those that may have been expected to, such as Senator Cynthia Lummis, weren’t present. The hearing only lasted two hours and included four nominees for various offices, causing some Democrats to lament that this wasn’t enough time to speak with each person.
Atkins’ most difficult moments revolved around his tenure as an SEC commissioner in the run-up to the 2008 meltdown and the agency’s failings in policing the mortgage securities that contributed to that crisis. Atkins deflected the primary responsibility of the crisis as belonging to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The next step in the confirmation process is for the committee to vote on the nominees and forward them for potential approval by the overall Senate.
