Trump to Nominate Paul Atkins as Next SEC Chair

Trump Names Paul Atkins as SEC Chair

Paul Atkins, a veteran financial regulator and a fixture in Washington’s conservative financial circles, is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead and possibly overhaul the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trump picked Atkins to replace outgoing Chair Gary Gensler, according to a statement posted on Truth Social. Gensler has said he plans to depart on Jan. 20.

“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations. He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before,” Trump said in the statement Wednesday.

Bitcoin Tops $100,000 for First Time, Lifted by Trump’s Crypto-Friendly SEC Pick

Bitcoin traded above $100,000 for the first time late Wednesday, powered by a wave of investors betting that President-elect Donald Trump will turn U.S. government policy into an engine of growth for crypto.

The world’s largest digital currency has staged an extraordinary rally since Election Day, surging more than 40% in just four weeks and setting one record after another. It surged as high as $103,853 after Trump picked Paul Atkins, a crypto-friendly former regulator, to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. During the campaign, Trump dropped his earlier skepticism of bitcoin and promised to “end Joe Biden’s war on crypto.”

Paul Atkins Is the Anti-Gensler for the SEC

Donald Trump partisans want to drain the Beltway swamp, but it helps to have nominees with the knowledge and experience to do it. That applies to Paul Atkins, whom Mr. Trump said Wednesday is his choice to replace Gary Gensler as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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The next chair’s chief task will be returning the SEC to its original mission of investor protection. Mr. Atkins has long decried the agency’s habit of regulation by enforcement. Take Mr. Gensler’s punishment of crypto companies for not registering with the agency. Meantime, the SEC all too often fails to stop actual wrongdoing. See the FTX crypto fraud.

Mr. Atkins is the opposite of Mr. Gensler in temperament and regulatory ambition. That means he’s exactly what the SEC needs.

Paul Atkins Will Bring Back 1990s-Style SEC Policing

I have no crystal ball, but I’m pretty confident that the SEC will shift from trying to make new law by suing crypto and other financial innovators to laying out sensible best practices in multilateral negotiations — with the regulator acting more like an umpire and less like one of the competing teams. If you’re a fan of these innovations, that should lead to more rapid progress and stability. If you think it’s all Ponzi schemes and ways to disguise leverage, you’ll fear that the SEC will allow crooks and delusional optimists to build up the next financial disaster.

I also expect that the SEC will slacken efforts to promote social goals like diversity and fighting climate change via disclosure regulation. Rather than browbeating companies to disclose what progressives think investors should care about, the SEC will probably go back to insisting companies disclose what investors actually do care about….

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Finally, I predict that an Atkins-chaired SEC will extract fewer gigantic fines for behavior no one thought was illegal or wrong before the investigations. The agency will instead spend more effort discussing practices and urging voluntary improvements, and less effort fining everyone afterwards. Almost everyone will welcome this, except perhaps people who think all Wall Street is corrupt, and any money taken from it is a victory for justice.

Former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins Tapped to Lead Agency

We don’t know exactly when the agency’s new chair will be confirmed. This nomination is at least a month ahead of schedule compared to the last couple of go-rounds, when nominations were announced in January, but whether that will affect the Senate’s timeline is still an open question. Back in 2020 when Chair Gensler was nominated, the process went like this: nomination announced in late January, Senate Banking Committee met to approve the nomination in early March and full Senate confirmation came along in mid-April. As previously announced, Chair Gensler is leaving the SEC on January 20th.