SEC Chairman Paul Atkins delivered a strong message today at the “DeFi and the American Spirit” roundtable in Washington, D.C.
His speech outlined some plans to make the United States a leader in crypto space – a vision that matches President Trump’s goal of turning America into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
Atkins said that decentralized finance, or DeFi, fits well with American values like freedom, rights to private property, and innovation. He explained what blockchain technology is: “a very creative and potentially revolutionary innovation that has us rethinking evidence of ownership and transfer of intellectual and economic property rights.”
“These are free market systems,” he said in his speech as he explained the openness and fair nature of the network.
Atkin took his time to criticize the previous administration for discouraging Americans from engaging with blockchain networks through lawsuits, regulations, and threats. Also for wrongly treating staking and mining as securities transactions.
He thanked the current staff for clarifying that “voluntary participation in a proof-of-work or proof-of-stake network as a ‘miner,’ ‘validator,’ or ‘staking-as-a-service’ provider is not within the scope of the federal securities laws.” However, he stressed, “It is not a duly promulgated rule with the force of law, so we cannot stop there.”na wee
The SEC Chair also gave his support for people to self-custody their crypto assets in personal digital wallets. “The right to have self-custody of one’s private property is a foundational American value that should not disappear when one logs onto the internet.” He said.
According to Atkin, the software developers who create these tools should also not be treated as brokers under securities law. Quoting a court, he said, “It would be irrational to hold the developer of a self-driving car liable for a third party’s misuse.”
As part of his remark, Atkins praised the resilience of on-chain software systems, which run automatically without central control and continued to operate during recent financial crises, unlike some centralized platforms.
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