Trump to Nominate Paul Atkins to be SEC Chair
Commentary by Steven Lofchie and Gage Raju-Salicki
President-elect Donald Trump chose former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as the next SEC chair.
Mr. Atkins currently serves as the CEO of Patomak Global Partners. Mr. Atkins served as SEC Commissioner from 2002 to 2008 during the George W. Bush administration. From 2009 to 2010, he was appointed a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. From 2012 to 2015, he served as an independent director and non-executive Chair of the Board of BATS Global Markets, Inc. He also served as a policy adviser to Mr. Trump during his first presidency.
Mr. Trump called Mr. Atkins a "proven leader for common sense regulations."
Commentary
Paul Atkins is a significant thinker on regulatory policy and governmental structure. His broad experience ranges from his work as a former SEC Commissioner to starting and running a compliance agency. That gives him in-the-weeds experience with practical problems.
The most immediate challenge Mr. Atkins will face is determining how the SEC's jurisdiction applies to cryptocurrencies. His longer-term challenge, however, may be to refashion the workings and culture of the agency. Over the past four years, the SEC consistently adopted rules outside of its legal authority, adopted rules with too little time and care for market input resulting in rules that are ambiguous or ill considered, imposed monstrous fines for record keeping failures that were unrelated to any evidence of actual fraud or harm to others and pushed an agenda that was coincident with political rather than economic goals.
Now real "reform" is possible. Chair Atkins, along with Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda, will make up a remarkably strong and thoughtful group of Republican Commissioners. Ms. Peirce and Mr. Uyeda have been consistent and thoughtful voices of reasoned dissent during Chair Gensler's tenure. Mr. Trump's nomination of Paul Atkins to lead the SEC presents a real opportunity to right the ship.
Commentary
President-elect Donald Trump's decision to nominate Paul Atkins for SEC Chair is a positive sign for those supporting the digital assets industry.
Mr. Atkins has been a supporter of crypto for a long time, having co-chaired the Token Alliance with The Digital Chamber (formerly The Chamber of Digital Commerce). When he joined the Chamber in 2020, he emphasized the goal of "seeking to bring about regulatory clarity for token projects[.]" The industry is now expecting that Mr. Atkins will pursue the same goal. (See, e.g. Greg Xethalis, General Counsel of Multicoin Capital: "Atkins supports crypto.")