The SEC: Paul Atkins and the Cryptocurrency Industry: A Trump’s Perspective on the U.S. and the Trump-Remnant

If he is confirmed by the Senate, Atkins would be in a position to help shape the regulations for an industry Trump has courted.

The SEC is expected to have a chair who’s more supportive of the sector, and so it will likely be appointed by Trump.

“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump said in his Truth Social post. He believes we need robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of investors to make our Economy the best. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

But Kelleher also warned of Atkins’ close ties to the business sector. He said that he was a deregulation cheerleader when he was a Commissioner at the SEC, which resulted in the global financial crisis.

President-elect Donald Trump said he has picked former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins to head the agency, according to a post he made on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Prices of cryptocurrencies have surged since Trump’s election, with bitcoin almost surpassing $100,000 for the first time ever in late November, before pulling back.

It’s easy to see why. Trump has promised to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet” by bringing in friendly regulators and ending the tough enforcement actions taken against the sector under President Joe Biden. A “strategic reserve” for cryptocurrencies is proposed by Trump, who may turn the country into a direct investor of the virtual currency. His family has even invested into a crypto venture.

If looser regulations help make cryptocurrencies more mainstream, they could become further integrated into the country’s financial system, raising the prospect of increased volatility and potentially even financial crises, Kelleher warns.

However, cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile. The industry has also seen spectacular implosions. The founder and CEO of FTX was sentenced for fraud in the 80’s after stealing billions of dollars from customers. Bankman- Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The SEC head appointment could benefit the industry as well as the Republican Congress. The GOP is set to control both the House and the Senate with narrow majorities. The makeup of the incoming Congress was shaped in part by the millions of dollars the industry spent to help defeat lawmakers seen as crypto skeptics, like Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, the current Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, who lost his reelection bid in November.

“There’s little doubt that the Trump administration, and the regulators that he’s going to appoint, and probably Congress under the control of Republicans, are going to unleash an unregulated crypto industry on Americans,” said Dennis Kelleher, a crypto skeptic who’s president and CEO of the advocacy group Better Markets.

The rapid gains in the price of bitcoins has investors hoping for more gains. But they’re not just optimistic because of Trump and the Republican Congress.

The SEC approved the launch of exchange-traded funds that can hold average investors who are willing and able to take advantage of the fact that there is no custodial or trading associated with it.

“Crypto is the priority of the crypto billionaires who are getting rich through speculators and gamblers with crypto. There’s a lot of them that get rich because they do bad things such as moneylaundering and tax evasion.

“Then, all the money is coming from the pockets of people who are gullible enough to believe that this particular new financial product has some value or worth when in reality it’s nothing but a vehicle for speculation,” he said.

Keller believes that the next financial crisis will be much worse than the one in 2008, as the clock begins to tick. It’s only a matter of time.