Paul Atkins is just one oath away from taking over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee the nation’s securities sector — including whatever role the crypto sector plays in that.

A swearing-in ceremony will soon put the former SEC commission in charge of the high-profile regulator — a matter cheered on by the digital assets sector that sees him as a strong ally after his significant background advising crypto firms as a financial-services consultant in Washington. Atkins’ Senate confirmation was easily cleared on Wednesday in a 52-44 vote.

The longtime figure in U.S. financial policy — both in government and as an outside adviser — was generally expected to easily move through confirmation, though the Senate Banking Committee approved Atkins along party lines, with all the panel’s Democrats opposing the nominee.

Atkins’ confirmation took the usual months to emerge from the Senate, and in the time between the departure of predecessor Gary Gensler and Atkins’ arrival, Trump’s interim agency chief, Mark Uyeda, carried out an ambitious and rapidly deployed crypto overhaul. The SEC has thrown out almost all of its high-profile digital assets enforcement actions, and its staff quickly outlined a number of segments of the industry that it considers outside its jurisdiction — including some stablecoins, memecoins (such as the president’s own $TRUMP) and proof-of-work mining.

Many of the areas in which the agency has already demonstrated policy shifts overlap with Trump’s family crypto businesses, including the family’s memecoins and its ties to World Liberty Financial, which has pursued its own stablecoin. Atkins will be taking over those issues to apply permanent standards, potentially directed by future legislation that’s now a priority in Congress.

Atkins’ tenure will begin with an incomplete commission, which is meant to have five members and whose sole Democrat — Caroline Crenshaw — is occupying an already expired term. The White House hasn’t yet moved to fill the two Democratic positions on the commission.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave the green light for the trading of options tied to ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

On Wednesday, the regulator approved a filing from Nasdaq ISE, filed last July, which asked to list options contracts on the BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA). Options are a popular trading vehicle to leverage and hedge risk and are especially attractive to institutional investors who are looking to control large amounts of shares.

The Commission had until today to make a decision. James Seyffart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said the approval was “100% expected.”

The options apply specifically to ETHA, meaning that BlackRock’s product is the only spot ether ETF that options can be traded on.

Other funds are listed on the New York Stock Exchange’s Arca and Cboe.

Ukraine’s top financial regulator is floating the idea of taxing cryptocurrency as personal income, with possible carveouts for certain foreign asset-backed stablecoins, under a newly proposed taxation matrix published on Tuesday.

In a translated letter introducing the potential new approach, Ruslan Magomedov, head of Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission, said that effective tax policy is a necessary step in preventing financial abuse and facilitating the “legal and responsible use of digital assets.”

“Establishing fair and understandable taxation rules is also a prerequisite for attracting investment and integrating the Ukrainian virtual asset market into the global financial market,” Magomedov added.

Under the NSSMC’s suggested tax scheme, certain crypto transactions — essentially those in which non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies are cashed out for fiat currency or exchanged for goods or services, and during which there were no financial losses from the transaction — would be taxed at Ukraine’s standard personal income tax rate of 18%, plus the additional 5% wartime levy that went into effect last December.

Crypto-to-crypto transactions would not be subject to taxation under the proposed tax matrix, which is in line with how several other European countries including Austria and France, as well as crypto-friendly jurisdictions like Singapore, handle crypto taxation.

Because Ukraine’s tax code exempts any income generated from transactions with foreign exchange values from being taxed, the NSSMC suggested “it makes sense to consider a preferential rate or exemption from taxation” for foreign asset-backed stablecoins and certain asset-referenced tokens (ARTs). The suggested preferential tax rate under the matrix could be either 5% or 9%.

The matrix also offered a variety of taxation options for other types of crypto transactions, including mining, which the NSSMC suggested could be considered a “business activity”; staking, which the regulator said could either be “considered as business captive income” or taxed only at the cash-out stage; as well as hard-forks and airdrops, which the regulator said could either be taxed as ordinary income or only at the cash-out stage.

Ukraine had previously introduced a draft law similarly amending the country’s tax code to cover cryptocurrency in 2023. A 2024 analysis from Swiss blockchain analytics firm Global Ledger found that Ukraine could stand to collect over $200 million in annual taxes from crypto transactions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky officially legalized the country’s cryptocurrency sector in 2022, determining the industry’s regulators and giving them the go-ahead to create specific regulations. The National Bank of Ukraine is currently working on a draft law based on the European Union’s (EU) Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.

Ukraine has been a candidate for EU membership since 2022.

CoinDesk reached out to the NSSMC for a comment.