Paul Atkins breezes SEC hearing as new test looms — policing Trump’s crypto empire

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Paul Atkins’ confirmation hearing was a yawner.

That’s good news for crypto.

Atkins, tapped by President Donald Trump to head the US Securities and Exchange Commission, fielded very few crypto-related questions by the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Aleks Gilbert reports.

Instead, Democratic senators opted to focus most of their grilling of Atkins, an SEC commissioner during the 2000s, on his actions leading up to the global financial crash of 2008.

This was a surprise.

Conflicts of interest

In the run-up to the hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the committee and a forceful crypto critic, had laid out a raft of questions for Atkins.

Right at the top of the list was what Atkins planned to do to address the Trump family’s growing crypto empire, Eric Johansson reported.

“Your financial ties to the industries you will soon regulate raise serious concerns about your ability to avoid conflicts of interest as a regulator,” Warren wrote in a letter to Atkins.

Indeed, earlier in the week the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial said it planned to introduce a dollar-backed stablecoin, reported Tim Craig.

At the same time, Trump Media & Technology Group, the outfit behind Truth Social, announced it was preparing to launch digital asset exchange-traded funds in a deal with Crypto.com, Osato Avan-Namayo reported.

Trump’s forays

Two days later, the SEC dropped its investigation of Crypto.com, an exchange based in Singapore, the company said in a statement.

The perception that the SEC is clearing out cases in tandem with the Trump family’s expansion of its crypto empire is unavoidable.

Even as crypto ventures applaud the end of Gary Gensler’s crackdown, the industry’s brand is at risk of becoming further tarnished.

Trump and his sons are rapidly making crypto as much of a family business as real estate.

That they are doing so at the very moment regulators and lawmakers are developing the framework for the industry is unprecedented.

Moreover, Trump has pardoned a number of crypto figures to curry favour in the industry. He started with Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the crypto-powered Silk Road narcotics emporium.

Now Trump just pardoned Arthur Hayes and two co-founders at BitMEX. Hayes was prosecuted by the Justice Department during Trump’s first term, and in 2022 he pleaded guilty to violating US banking law.

Regulatory clarity

From a regulatory perspective, it’s clear that crypto is getting whatever it wants from this administration.

Yet the bad news is that Trump’s conflicts of interest may backfire by turning off institutional and retail investors who were just coming around to crypto.

For all the clarity on offer, the industry’s push to become a mainstream proposition isn’t getting easier.

Edward Robinson is the story editor for DL News. Contact the author at ed@dlnews.com.