Paul Atkins elected as the new chairman of the SEC, where will the future of cryptocurrency head?

Author: shushu, BlockBeats

In the early hours of December 5, Trump announced on Truth Social the confirmation of Paul Atkins as the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He wrote in a letter:

"I am pleased to announce the nomination of Paul Atkins as the next chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Paul is an exceptional leader who advocates for common-sense regulation. He believes that strong and innovative capital markets can meet the needs of investors and provide capital support to drive our economy to become the strongest in the world. He also deeply understands that digital assets and other innovations are crucial to making America greater.

Paul is the CEO and founder of Patomak Global Partners, a consulting firm focused on risk management. Since 2017, he has served as the co-chair of the Digital Chamber's Token Alliance, dedicated to researching and promoting the development of the digital asset industry. From 2002 to 2008, he served as a commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, during which he strongly advocated for transparency and the protection of investor interests. He holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Vanderbilt University Law School and a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) degree from Wofford College, graduating with highest honors and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Congratulations to Paul and his beautiful wife Sarah, and their sons Stewart, Peter, and Henry."

Who is Paul Atkins?

Paul Atkins, 66, is a former SEC commissioner from the George W. Bush administration, known for opposing "high fines for companies violating securities laws" and previously opposing the Dodd-Frank Act, which strengthened federal regulatory powers after the 2008 financial crisis.

In 2016, Paul Atkins played a key role in Trump's presidential transition team, significantly influencing Trump's laissez-faire attitude towards financial regulation.

Shortly after his term as an SEC commissioner ended in 2008, Paul Atkins founded the financial services consulting firm Patomak Global Partners. The firm provides regulatory and compliance consulting services to banks and investment institutions. In recent years, the company has also advised clients on cryptocurrency and digital asset-related issues.

As a lawyer, Paul Atkins actively participates in developing "best practices" for cryptocurrency trading platforms and serves as the co-chair of the Token Alliance under the Digital Chamber of Commerce.

Currently, his nomination still requires Senate confirmation.

Congressman Tom Emmer stated that Paul Atkins has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors and understands that "regulating through enforcement" is a failed strategy that has severely hindered innovation in the U.S.

According to The New York Times, Paul Atkins is a pro-business conservative who may adopt a more lenient regulatory approach than the current SEC chair.

What SEC Chair Concepts Are Being Hyped?

RSR

After Trump's announcement of Paul's election as SEC chair, RSR surged 27% in a short time, with a price currently reported at $0.0231. The connection to RSR comes from the community discovering that Atkins had served as an advisor to the project.

Reserve founder Nevin Freeman explained in a post that "Paul is not currently actively involved in Reserve's consulting work; he was merely an advisor in the early stages of the project. However, his open-mindedness during our interactions impressed me, and his willingness to publicly serve as an advisor to Reserve indicates his commitment and supportive attitude towards the cryptocurrency space."

Reserve Rights (RSR) is a dual-token stablecoin platform launched on the Huobi Prime platform in May 2019. Reserve aims to establish a stable, decentralized stablecoin and digital payment system, characterized by a self-regulating supply based on demand and supported by 100% or more on-chain collateral.

The main issue RSR seeks to reduce is volatility, as the volatility of cryptocurrencies limits the market's expansion as a medium of exchange. Merchants have been reluctant to accept cryptocurrencies due to concerns about potential profit loss during market downturns. The Reserve protocol provides the market with a stable store of value, medium of exchange, and standard for deferred payments. Today, the focus of the Reserve Rights ecosystem is to help individuals, treasuries, and DAOs combat inflation.

The total supply of RSR is 100,000,000,000 tokens, with a current market capitalization of $1,390,407,126 and a TVL of $278,254,588.

DTF

DTF is a meme coin that has no direct relation to the Decentralized Token Folios protocol launched by Reserve, and its full name is "Believe In Someth in g," corresponding to the DTF website's "Stop trad in g, believe in someth in g."

Currently, DTF has a total market capitalization of $23.9 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of $20 million.

XRP

XRP has surged fivefold in a month, returning its market capitalization to the third position among crypto assets, back to levels seen before the 2020 SEC lawsuit against Ripple, making this long-standing token one of the strongest-performing altcoins recently.

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange, and remittance network created by the American technology company Ripple Labs Inc. Ripple was launched in 2012, based on a distributed open-source protocol that supports tokens representing fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies, commodities, or other units of value. It claims to enable "secure, instant, and nearly free global financial transactions of any scale, with no chargebacks."

Since Trump's administration, there have been continuous crypto-related policies, and XRP's path to launch is closely related to the announcement of the current SEC chair's resignation. The SEC sued Ripple and its two executives—CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen—starting in December 2020, accusing them of "conducting an unregistered securities offering of $1.3 billion," and this lawsuit remains unresolved to this day.

On December 1, former CFTC chairman Chris Giancarlo stated in an interview that the SEC should reconsider its approach, especially in light of recent legal outcomes and the potentially changing regulatory environment. When asked if the SEC would drop the Ripple lawsuit, Giancarlo said, "I think they should… I bet they will."