Paul Atkins, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), was confirmed by the Senate after a 52–44 vote on April 9. Now SEC staff say that they expect him to officially resume his new position this week. According to what two employees told Crypto In America, they are already preparing for him to take over the agency.
Retail crypto traders have been asking questions online, especially on X, wondering why Atkins hasn’t already resumed after getting the Senate’s nod. Meanwhile, officials in Washington have said the delay is standard procedure. There are paperworks to handle after a Senate vote, and the Easter holiday added extra time. They noted that the delay is not unusual.
SEC staff says Atkins could attend the crypto roundtable this week
If Atkins resumes this week, he could be present at the SEC’s third crypto policy roundtable on Friday. The event remains scheduled, even though Congress is on break. The roundtable is expected to focus on custody issues — who holds crypto, how they hold it, and what the rules should be.
It will also feature two-panel discussions. One will focus on custody by broker-dealers and wallet providers, while the other will cover investment advisers and crypto companies that manage other people’s assets. People from Fidelity, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, and Fireblocks are all on the panel list. A few law firms are also expected to join the roundtable.
Atkins is entering a completely different regulatory environment than his predecessor Gary Gensler. Gensler reportedly ran the SEC like a bulldozer, targeting the $2.7 trillion crypto market hard and pushing rules like climate disclosure requirements for public companies. Now that Gensler has stepped down, the SEC is about to be led by someone who sees things differently.
Atkins has already made his views public, noting that his top goal is to create a clear set of rules for crypto, and he wants that framework to be what he calls “rational, coherent, and principled.” He is also pushing to take politics out of SEC decision-making. In his words, the agency needs to stop letting politics dictate how it deals with financial markets.
While federal regulators stall, Oregon has stepped in. On Friday, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit against Coinbase. He’s accusing the company of running an illegal exchange and broker-dealer operation by offering unregistered securities to Oregon residents.
This lawsuit comes just two months after the SEC dropped its case against Coinbase. Rayfield’s office said that decision left a gap in enforcement and called it a sign of a growing “enforcement vacuum” caused by federal rollbacks under the Trump administration. He compared investing in crypto without full information to “undergoing a medical procedure without knowing the risks.”