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Trump SEC Pick Paul Atkins’ Crypto Ties Draw Sen. Warren’s Ire Ahead of Confirmation Hearing

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1 неделя ago

27 марта, 2025

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Ahead of his confirmation hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee tomorrow, Paul Atkins — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — disclosed having up to $6 million in crypto-related assets, prompting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to cry foul.

In a Sunday letter to Atkins, Warren stressed that the former SEC commissioner’s background as a consultant and lobbyist for the financial industry could create “significant conflicts of interest” if he is confirmed.

“You also have served as an expert witness hired by Wall Street firms accused of engaging in Ponzi schemes and other misconduct that you would now be responsible for investigating as SEC Chair. Furthermore, you have served as a Board Advisor to the Digital Chamber, a registered lobbying group for the crypto industry. In these roles, you and your firm were paid by the same companies that you would now be responsible for regulating,” Warren wrote. “This will raise serious concerns about your impartiality and commitment to serving the public interest if you are confirmed to serve as the next SEC Chair.”

Warren urged Atkins to consider mitigating these potential conflicts of interest by recusing himself from any SEC matters involving his former clients, and agreeing not to do any lobbying, consulting or other work for any companies in the industry regulated by the SEC for at least four years after his departure from the agency. Her letter requests a written response from Atkins by Thursday.

Another letter, also dated Sunday, asked Atkins a series of questions about how he believed the cryptocurrency industry should be regulated, alongside other matters before the SEC’s purview.

Atkins’ recent financial disclosures revealed a $328 million family fortune, according to Reuters, largely stemming from his wife’s family ties to roofing supply giant TAMKO Building Products. His risk consultancy firm, Patomak Global Partners — though which Atkins has done consulting for a range of companies, both crypto and traditional finance, and from which he has promised to divest if confirmed — was valued at between $25 and $50 million, Reuters reported.

Atkins’ crypto-related assets were valued at up to $6 million, according to a report from Fortune, and include a combined $1 million in equity in crypto custodian Anchorage Digital and tokenization firm Securitize (Atkins held a board seat at Securitize until February). Atkins reported having up to a $5 million stake in the crypto investment firm Off the Chain Capital, where he is a limited partner. Off the Chain’s investments include private shares in big crypto companies like Digital Currency Group (DCG) and Kraken, as well as Mt. Gox bankruptcy claims.

In a Tuesday filing with the Office of Government Ethics, Atkins pledged to divest from Off the Chain Capital within 120 days of his confirmation. He has also resigned from his position on the board of the Digital Chamber of Commerce and the Token Alliance of the Chamber of Digital Commerce according to the same filing.

Atkins crypto ties are a stark contrast to his predecessor, former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who was known for his so-called “regulation by enforcement” approach to crypto regulation. Ahead of Atkins’ confirmation, the SEC’s current leadership, spearheaded by Acting Chair Mark Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce, have been overhauling the agency’s crypto regulation strategy, inviting industry players to roundtable discussions at the SEC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. and backing down a considerable number of investigations and open litigation against crypto companies.

However, not everyone that the SEC went after under Gensler is off the hook — the agency has not yet shut its probes into Unicoin or Crypto.com, both of which received Wells notices (a heads up of forthcoming enforcement charges) from the SEC last year.

The SEC has shut down investigations into companies including Immutable, OpenSea and Yuga Labs, and ended litigation against companies like Coinbase, Kraken and Ripple since Uyeda took over the agency as acting chair.

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U.S. SEC Nominee Atkins Gets Confirmation Nod From Senate Banking Committee

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33 минуты ago

3 апреля, 2025

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The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has voted to advance the confirmations of President Donald Trump’s picks to run the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — both key positions for the future U.S. regulation of the crypto sector.

The nominations of Paul Atkins to permanently take over the SEC from former Chair Gary Gensler and of Jonathan Gould to lead the banking regulator OCC now move to consideration by the overall Senate. Approvals there will allow Atkins and Gould to start work at the regulatory agencies.

Atkins and Gould both advanced under party-line votes in the committee on Thursday — each going 13-11.

Committee Chairman Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, praised the nominees before the vote.

«Paul Atkins, the former SEC commissioner, will promote capital formation and provide much-needed clarity for digital assets,» Scott said. And of Gould, he said the nominee, once chief counsel at the OCC, will «put an end to the politically-motivated debanking» — a major point of complaint for the crypto industry.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued some last-minute criticisms of the nominees before rejecting all of them.

«Mr. Atkins was dead wrong in the leadup to the worst financial crisis in a generation,» she said of Atkins’ previous tenure at the SEC in the period before the 2008 global financial crisis, and she added of Gould’s previous time at the OCC that he «weakened the rules and helped undermine» the banking system’s safety and soundness.

The recent confirmation hearing for the nominees didn’t address crypto issues in significant depth, though both would be heavily involved in future regulation of the industry.

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Ethereum Developers Lock in May 7 for Pectra Upgrade

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1 час ago

3 апреля, 2025

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Ethereum developers set May 7 as the target date for the long-awaited Pectra upgrade on Thursday, beginning the countdown for the blockchain’s biggest changes since March 2024.

Pectra contains a series of improvements aimed at making Ethereum more user-friendly and efficient. One such improvement is adding «smart contract» capabilities to wallets, which can make them easier to use and recover.

The decision to schedule Pectra was made during a call between Ethereum’s core developers — just over a week after the upgrade went live on the Hoodi testnet without any hiccups. Pectra’s test on Hoodi was the third and final dry-run of the upgrade. Two earlier tests had bugs, which led the developers to delay the upgrade on Ethereum’s mainnet.

Pectra consists of 11 major code changes, or «Ethereum improvement proposals» (EIPs), that will be shipped all at once. Together, the features aim to improve the staking experience, introduce wallet features, and update the overall network.

One of the main Pectra changes that will benefit Ethereum validators is EIP-7251, which will increase the amount of ETH one can stake from 32 to 2,048. The change is meant to alleviate the experience for those staking across multiple validators, who can now set that up under one node instead of multiple.

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Interoperability Protocol Hyperlane Reveals Airdrop Details

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2 часа ago

3 апреля, 2025

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The team behind interoperability protocol Hyperlane shared Thursday their upcoming token airdrop plans happening at the end of the month.

The airdrop will occur on April 22, and users can check their eligibility to receive $HYPER tokens via a portal provided by the Hyperlane Foundation by April 13, the team shared in a press release with CoinDesk.

The token distribution will mostly go to the community, with 57% of the supply going to users, while the remaining circulating tokens will be distributed to the core team (25%), investors (10.9%), and the foundation’s treasury (7.1%).

The team also shared that the airdrop will be fully unlocked for community recipients, while the core team and investors’ tokens will be locked for the first 12 months.

In addition to the token distribution to early users, Hyperlane is coming out with their “expansion rewards” program, which is based on developer and cross-chain end-user activity, and will be distributed to users each quarter proportional to their activity on the network.

“The retroactive token allocation at TGE is just the first of many over the coming several years, as protocol ownership begins moving into the hands of the developers and end-users who rely on Hyperlane to send assets and other critical messages across chains,” said Nam Chu Hoai, a co-founder of Hyperlane.