Donald Trump picks Paul Atkins to run SEC

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked conservative lawyer Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, choosing a regulatory skeptic who will be expected to curb the agency's enforcement division.

- Dave Michaels

Atkins, well known in Congress and on Wall Street, served as a Republican member of the SEC during the Bush administration, when he sometimes opposed regulations he argued were unnecessarily burdensome. If confirmed as the next SEC chair, Atkins isn't expected to dismantle core investor protections, but is likely to re-examine or revise much of what the agency did during the Biden administration.

"Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations," Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. "He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before."

Atkins has questioned the SEC's crackdown on cryptocurrency firms and would likely take a friendlier approach to the market, in line with Trump's newfound fondness for the industry. Many other Republicans want the agency to deal with the market in a more welcoming way than it did during the Biden administration.

The SEC under Chair Gary Gensler sued many of the biggest crypto exchanges, accusing the platforms of dealing assets that are illegal to trade without regulatory supervision. Gensler declined to write customized rules for the crypto market, saying many digital assets are securities that should have to comply with current investor-protection rules.

Atkins and other critics say Gensler's approach was too rigid for cryptocurrencies designed to run over peer-to-peer computer networks. The SEC's approach drove increasing amounts of crypto-market activity toward Asia and Europe, where governments created regulatory frameworks designed specifically for digital assets.