The Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, has said the agency will give companies notice before punishing them for technical violations.
As per the Financial Times, Atkins, appointed by the U.S. President Donald Trump, said that the SEC is focused on going after “crooks,” like Bernie Madoff. He added that minor breaches will get warnings first.
Atkins is now rolling back tough enforcement programs from the Biden era. Since January, the SEC has dropped several cases and investigations against crypto platforms, some of which had supported Trump’s inauguration fund.
“Especially in more recent years, it was not grounded in precedent [or] predictability. It would shoot first and then ask questions later,” Atkins said, criticizing the previous approach under former Chair Gary Gensler.
He argued that fines for record-keeping violations were sometimes handled like a formula: “What’s your revenue, here’s your invoice.” He said this approach lacked fairness and due process.
Atkins wants the SEC to act more like a teacher giving students time to fix mistakes: “You have six months to clear this up.” He emphasized the need for a standardized system across brokers, advisers, and other firms.
Crypto regulation plans
On crypto, Atkins takes a very different stance from Gensler. He believes most tokens are not securities and wants to create rules for trading tokenized shares and bonds on blockchain, keeping activity in the U.S. rather than offshore.
Under Gensler, the SEC filed major lawsuits against crypto giants like Ripple (2020), Terraform Labs (2022), and Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken (2023), costing the industry billions in legal fees.
“We don’t want people doing this offshore,” he said, pointing to the 2022 collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. While many investors in the Bahamas-based exchange lost money, customers of its regulated U.S. arm got their funds back.
However, Atkins warned that companies already trading tokenized U.S. stocks should be cautious. He stressed that securities laws still apply and that rules are being developed for “smart contracts” that promise instant settlement of trades.
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