Trump Taps Paul Atkins for Next SEC Chair

President-elect Donald Trump has selected the pro-crypto Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to three sources familiar with the discussions.

One source specified that Trump has reached out to Atkins but is waiting on him to accept. By selecting Atkins, Trump is delivering on a promise he made to the crypto community during his campaign.

Current Chair Gary Gensler, who announced two weeks ago that he will resign on Jan. 20 when Trump is inaugurated, has made himself a pariah in the crypto industry for pursuing what’s been seen as a policy of regulation by enforcement. Atkins will now need to be confirmed by the Senate, unless Trump chooses to pursue a recess appointment while the Senate is out of session.

Atkins served as an SEC commissioner under President George W. Bush and is widely respected in conservative legal circles and amongst the establishment Republican party. Since leaving the commission he’s become outspokenly supportive of the crypto industry, having co-chaired the Token Alliance at the industry group Digital Chamber of Commerce since 2017. As founder and chief executive of the consultancy Potomak Global Partners, Atkins has advised digital finance companies on regulatory compliance topics since 2009.

“Senate Republicans really respect the tradition of Commissioner Paul Atkins,” explained George Mason University professor J.W. Verret, who previously served on the SEC Advisory Committee, in a call earlier this month. “He was the first time anyone had been a true libertar…  ian and SEC commissioner, and that was a unique thing.”

The team vetting candidates for the chairperson position reached out to crypto industry leaders two weeks ago asking for their preferences, demonstrating how much Gensler’s unpopularity has figured in Trump’s latest nomination.

Gensler was criticized for not establishing clear rules and guidelines for the crypto industry. Under his leadership, the SEC instead pursued a plethora of enforcement actions against crypto companies and protocols, including exchanges, token issuers, and NFT creators, for failing to register with the agency or disclose their work with what the SEC claimed were unregistered securities offerings.

For his part, Gensler only clarified that he saw Bitcoin as a commodity, insisting that existing securities laws could be applied to other crypto projects, even including ether until the SEC approved spot ether ETFs.