Today: SEC's Atkins Will Become First Sitting Chairman to Address the Bitcoin Conference

SEC Chair Paul Atkins Makes History as First Sitting Commissioner to Address the Bitcoin Conference

No sitting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair has previously appeared at the annual Bitcoin conference, which is set to draw more than 40,000 participants this year to the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. Atkins’ decision to attend potentially signals the degree to which bitcoin has moved from the regulatory periphery to the center of U.S. financial policy.

The backdrop is a series of regulatory actions that represent the most substantive shift in U.S. crypto policy in over a decade. In April, the SEC published a digital asset taxonomy distinguishing five categories of crypto assets, with four of the five falling outside the definition of securities under federal law. The agency has also proposed an innovation exemption giving market participants a defined, compliant pathway to begin facilitating tokenized securities trading onchain.

Speaking at The Economic Club of Washington on April 21, Atkins stated the agency “will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” framing the regulatory reset explicitly as a matter of competitive necessity for the U.S.

Insider Trading Cases Threaten Reckoning for Prediction Markets

Prediction markets have quickly grown from a niche corner of finance to a multibillion-dollar industry with big Wall Street investment, but a growing list of insider trading allegations is bringing concerns about the platforms all the way to the White House.

The most significant development came on Thursday afternoon, when prosecutors announced charges against Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US soldier who allegedly took advantage of classified intelligence to win more than $400,000 betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

The indictment came not long after French authorities said that they were probing whether someone had tampered with a weather station that was used to settle prediction market bets on the temperature in Paris. Those bets, and the Venezuela trades both happened on Polymarket, the largest international prediction market. Earlier in the week, Polymarket’s main rival, Kalshi Inc., said that it suspended and fined three congressional candidates for betting on their own races.

President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, right after Van Dyke’s criminal charges were announced, that he didn’t like prediction markets “conceptually” and was “not happy” with them, calling the world “somewhat of a casino.”

Board Oversight of AI: Do Boards Need AI Experts?

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across industries increases rapidly, many boards of directors are considering whether they have the expertise necessary to maintain effective oversight of AI-related opportunities and risks. As the SEC has made clear regarding cybersecurity, boards must find a way to exercise their supervisory obligations, even in technical areas, if those areas present enterprise risks. A frequent question in this context is whether boards should have a director who is an “AI expert.”

In this Debevoise Update, we highlight three considerations for boards evaluating the need for AI expertise in the boardroom.

Cyber Incidents’ “Long Tail” Impact on Shareholder Value

A new study highlighted on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, and posted by Subodh Mishra, Global Head of Communications at ISS STOXX, on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, quantifies how cyber incidents can have sustained and measurable negative impacts on shareholder value. The report, based on research conducted by ISS STOXX and ISS-Corporate (the study), analyzed cyber incidents among companies in the Russell 3000 over a multi-year period. Its findings are stark: companies experiencing significant cyber incidents underperform the broader market by approximately 5% on average over a three-year time period.

As D&O Diary readers are aware, cybersecurity issues can be a source of D&O liability. The findings in this recent study pile on with findings that cybersecurity failures may also result in share underperformance for a broad period. The following discusses the findings of this most recent study, reasons for a longer tail and D&O liability and litigation implications.

SEC Files Settled Action as to Former Investment Advisory Firm Employee Charged with Insider Trading

On April 20, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled action as to Rakesh Ahuja, a former employee of an investment advisory firm, for allegedly insider trading based on confidential information he obtained during his employment.

According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ahuja worked for an investment advisory firm that provided investment advisory services to two pooled investment funds that specialized in making investments in biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The SEC alleges that the advisory firm provided Anuja with material nonpublic information, including confidential clinical trial data, from these companies as part of its due diligence process. The SEC further alleges that on multiple occasions, Ahuja breached his duty to the advisory firm by causing a brokerage account in the name of one of his close relatives to trade based on material nonpublic information in advance of announcements by companies he was researching for the advisory firm. Ahuja allegedly engaged in this conduct in connection with three publicly traded companies on a total of four occasions. According to the complaint, Ahuja’s unlawful trades resulted in profits of approximately $65,000.