Paul Atkins, a contributor to Project 2025’s over 900-page Mandate for Leadership, has been chosen as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Trump.
While the role of Chairperson can be selected from any sitting commissioner without a Senate confirmation hearing, Atkins is not currently an SEC commissioner. He will need to pass a Senate confirmation hearing to become a commissioner before he can take on the role of Chairman.
As the SEC Chairman, Atkins will have significant power to shape the regulatory framework governing businesses and investments in the United States. The SEC is in charge of protecting investors from fraudulent business practices and investment schemes like ponzi schemes or falsified performance reports.
Importantly, Atkins will take the lead on how the U.S. government should regulate cryptocurrencies. He is considered friendly to cryptocurrencies – as is typical of the incoming Trump administration.
He blamed the FTX collapse on U.S. regulators and lamented Binance’s departure from the U.S. on the far-right Free the People podcast last year.
In reality, FTX collapsed because Samuel Bankman-Fried stole over $8 billion from customers, not because of regulators. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for his crimes.
On the other hand, Binance left the U.S. after pleading guilty in a criminal investigation. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen said the company “allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,”
In addition to his apparent support for criminal cryptocurrency CEOs, Atkins has been outspoken in his opposition to the financial penalties being levied against companies that violate U.S. regulations.
Atkins co-authored an article with former SEC Chair Bradley Bondi where they argued that, among other things, penalties were inappropriate in most SEC cases.
They argue that SEC investigations are almost universally harmful to shareholders – because the negative publicity and, in some cases, the revelation that executives misrepresented the strength of the company cause stock prices to fall – and that penalties often harm shareholders by further depleting company coffers, delaying or preventing share value recovery.
Later, the two challenge the value of penalties as deterrents. Atkins and Bondi point out that people who commit fraud already know that, if the fraud is discovered, it will hurt the company. They argue that if someone is already willing to hurt the company and its shareholders, then the threat of a corporate fine will not stop them from going through with the plan.
Of course, part of the purpose of a corporate penalty is to provide compensation to the shareholders that were harmed by the fraudster and the corporation that failed to prevent the fraud. Those penalties are often disbursed to the victims of fraud, which Atkins and Bondi acknowledged elsewhere in the article.
Overall, Atkins is likely to move the SEC toward fewer regulations and lesser financial penalties in cases of fraud. This will be especially true when it comes to cryptocurrencies, given that he has come out to defend some of the most egregious SEC violations since the Madoff investment fraud.