Paul Atkins, left, talks to then SEC Chair Christopher Cox throughout a Home Monetary Companies Committee listening to on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2007. Atkins was then an SEC commissioner, and he has now been picked by President-elect Trump as the subsequent head of the company,
Mark Wilson/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America
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Mark Wilson/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America
President-elect Donald Trump mentioned he had picked former Securities and Alternate Commissioner Paul Atkins to move the company,
in keeping with a posting he made on Fact Social on Wednesday.
Atkins served as an SEC Commissioner from 2002 to 2008. He is now the CEO of consulting firm Patomak Global Partners which has purchasers throughout the monetary and cryptocurrency industries.
Atkins is named a robust backer of cryptocurrencies, and could possibly be in place to assist form key rules for an business Trump has avidly courted ought to he be confirmed by the Senate.
“Paul is a confirmed chief for frequent sense rules,” Trump mentioned in his Fact Social posting. “He believes within the promise of sturdy, revolutionary capital markets which might be attentive to the wants of Traders, & that present capital to make our Economic system one of the best within the World. He additionally acknowledges that digital property & different improvements are essential to Making America Larger than Ever Earlier than.”
Present SEC Chair Gary Gensler has introduced he would step down on Jan. 20, when Trump is because of be inaugurated. Gensler had extensively antagonized the crypto business by going after key gamers with aggressive enforcement actions.
New daybreak for crypto?
Atkins had been seen lately as one of many main contenders to exchange Gensler, sparking pleasure throughout the crypto business.
Costs of cryptocurrencies have surged since Trump’s election, with bitcoin virtually surpassing $100,000 for the primary time ever earlier than pulling again.
Just some years in the past, Trump had known as cryptocurrencies a “rip-off” and told Fox Business they had been “probably a catastrophe ready to occur.”
However he has had a conversion. Throughout this 12 months’s election, Trump promised to make to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet” by bringing in pleasant regulators and ending the sorts of robust enforcement actions taken towards the sector below President Biden. His household additionally has monetary pursuits in a crypto-related firm known as World Liberty Monetary.
Gary Gensler, the present SEC Chair, speaks throughout a gathering of monetary regulators on the Treasury Division in Washington, DC on Might 10, 2024. Gensler, who mentioned he’ll step down on Jan. 20, had antagonized the crypto business with aggressive enforcement actions.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP by way of Getty Photographs/AFP
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ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP by way of Getty Photographs/AFP
His choice of Atkins, a well-known crypto backer, may now assist propel the business additional.
Atkins has expressed reservations earlier than in regards to the enforcement actions taken by the SEC towards the home crypto business, saying it may drive the business overseas as a substitute of creating it within the U.S.
However crypto critics are alarmed
Nevertheless, Trump’s assist of the crypto business has alarmed critics of the sector.
Cryptocurrencies have a historical past of intense volatility and have been racked by frauds and scams. They’re additionally believed to be extensively used for unlawful actions such because the drug commerce in addition to terrorism.
The business has additionally seen spectacular implosions. FTX, as soon as the world’s greatest crypto trade, collapsed in 2022 and its founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was convicted of fraud for stealing billions in buyer cash. Bankman-Fried was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Nonetheless, Trump had been extensively anticipated to nominate crypto-friendly regulators.
The crypto business may additionally profit from a Republican Congress, with the GOP set to manage each the Home and the Senate with slender majorities. The make-up of Congress was formed partly by the hundreds of thousands of {dollars} the business spent to assist defeat lawmakers seen as crypto skeptics, like Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, the present Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, who misplaced his reelection bid in November.
