Paul Atkins' First Public Event as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Was a Crypto Roundtable

Paul Atkins’ first public event as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was a crypto roundtable on Friday, where the new agency chief devoted his inaugural speech to assuring the industry

Paul Atkins began his tenure as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with a public event focused on crypto, an area sure to remain a priority for the new agency chief.

Atkins, who was recently confirmed by the Senate, spoke at an agency roundtable on Friday morning, where he expressed optimism that the SEC can continue to adapt its securities market structure policy to accommodate digital assets despite a lack of congressional action to create a crypto regulatory framework.

“We're always happy to have Congress's input, and if there's a statute to back up what we're doing, I think that's all the better,” Atkins said in answer to a question from CoinDesk. “But I will say that we have ample room to maneuver under existing rules and laws.”

The agency and industry have been awaiting congressional action to establish crypto market-structure oversight that will likely set guardrails, and Atkins told an audience at the SEC's Washington headquarters that the regulator will work toward delivering “a rational, fit-for-purpose framework” for crypto.

The new chairman also said he thinks the concept of special-purpose crypto broker dealers, a little-used registration most prominently represented by Prometheum, has been very successful and may need to be reconsidered, and he said the agency will look at whether custody rules need to be changed to “accommodate crypto assets and blockchain technology.”

Atkins was previously the subject of a swearing-in ceremony earlier this week in the White House, where Trump said “he's the perfect man to lead this agency” at a time when the digital assets sector needs regulatory clarity, and Atkins said a “top priority of my chairmanship will be to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets.” But Friday's event at the SEC's headquarters represents his first full-fledged engagement with the public.

The crypto sector has high hopes for Atkins, though his stand-in for the past few months — Commissioner Mark Uyeda — already took a number of decisive actions to reverse the regulator's earlier crypto reluctance.

As interim chairman, Uyeda reversed or sidelined a number of crypto policy efforts pursued under former Chair Gary Gensler and has abandoned most of the regulator's prominent enforcement actions targeting the industry.

Until now, industry expectations for Atkins' leadership were based on conjecture rooted in his experience advising and investing in digital assets firms, especially since his Senate confirmation hearing failed to explore his crypto views.

Atkins had served as an adviser to crypto entities such as the Digital Chamber and as a board member of tokenization firm Securitize, and his ties to Off the Chain Capital had previously linked him to its investment stakes in big crypto companies like Digital Currency Group (DCG) and Kraken.

Friday's roundtable was the third in a series the agency has held on crypto matters, this time focused on custody in the industry. Crypto custody has been a particularly dicey topic at the agency, which under Gensler's reign had sought to approve a policy demanding investment advisers put their clients' digital assets only with certain qualified custodians. Gensler had argued that the rule was meant to exclude most of the existing crypto platforms as suitable custodians, but the effort was put on ice.

Atkins was asked by reporters on the event's sidelines about President Trump's own crypto interests and whether Trump's memecoin, $TRUMP, will rob credibility from the White House on industry policy.

"I have no comment on any of that," Atkins said.