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Trump’s Pick to Run SEC Paul Atkins Promises New Crypto Stance, Gets Few Questions

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Paul Atkins, the former member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that President Donald Trump has tapped to run the agency, assured a different direction for the agency on crypto from the last four years, though he wasn’t pressed with big-picture digital assets questions during a Thursday confirmation hearing.

Now that Trump has secured the cabinet-level echelon of his government, the White House is working on shepherding top agency chiefs through the Senate confirmation process. While many of the crypto headlines are coming from the administration and Congress these days, those running the regulatory agencies will ultimately be the ones writing the regulations the industry will have to conform with.

Atkins is seeking to be the successor of ex-Chair Gary Gensler, whose years at the agency established him as the digital assets sector’s most prominent nemesis. But Trump’s nominee is already positioning himself in stark contrast to Gensler, who criticized the industry’s history with swindlers and contended that current securities law was sufficient to treat much of the space as if it were in active violation of registration requirements.

«A top priority of my chairmanship will be to work with my fellow commissioners and Congress to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent, and principled approach,» Atkins said in his prepared testimony for Thursday.

Senator Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, said Atkins will «provide long-overdue clarity for digital assets.»

But even before the hearing began, Atkins was being slammed by Senator Elizabether Warren, the Massachusetts lawmaker who is the committee’s ranking Democrat, who registered doubt about his ability to be impartial to the digital assets sector he’s served as an adviser.

At the hearing table beside Atkins, Gould made his case for taking over the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator for national banks. The OCC has been a significant player in the digital assets sector’s campaign against U.S. banking oversight that’s pressured banks to keep the industry at an arm’s length. Crypto firms and insiders have struggled to maintain banking relationships and have argued that the regulators authored that «debanking» strain.

The first question to Gould was on that situation, with Scott asking whether he’d commit to reversing that previous stance, to which Gould responded, «absolutely.»

For the crypto industry, Atkins’ responses on crypto matters are potentially more urgent. But he wasn’t questioned on his views about next steps for cryptocurrency oversight, nor about the legislative efforts poised to remake U.S. crypto policy.

SBF

At one point, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana raised the topic of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who he said looks like a «fourth runner-up in a John Belushi lookalike contest,» and asked Atkins whether the SEC appropriately looked into SBF’s parents for their involvement in his fraudulent activities.

«I look forward to getting to the SEC to find out what happened,» Atkins said. «Like you, I’m concerned about those reports.»

But Kennedy took it further, suggesting a lack of accountability that signals «two standards for law and punishment» in the U.S.

«I don’t think the SEC has done a damn thing,» Kennedy said. «They’re crooks!» he shouted. «And I expect the SEC to do something about it.»

Few other senators delved into wider crypto matters, and those that may have been expected to, such as Senator Cynthia Lummis, weren’t present. The hearing only lasted two hours and included four nominees for various offices, causing some Democrats to lament that this wasn’t enough time to speak with each person.

Atkins’ most difficult moments revolved around his tenure as an SEC commissioner in the run-up to the 2008 meltdown and the agency’s failings in policing the mortgage securities that contributed to that crisis. Atkins deflected the primary responsibility of the crisis as belonging to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The next step in the confirmation process is for the committee to vote on the nominees and forward them for potential approval by the overall Senate.

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Illinois to Drop Staking Lawsuit Against Coinbase

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Illinois will soon drop its staking lawsuit against Coinbase, joining three other U.S. states that have recently backed down from litigation against the exchange.

A spokesperson for Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias told CoinDesk on Thursday that the office “intends to drop the Coinbase lawsuit.” The spokesperson did not reply when asked when the case may be dropped.

Illinois was one of 10 U.S. states that brought charges against Coinbase in 2023 for allegedly violating state securities laws through its staking program. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also charged Coinbase with violating federal securities laws for its staking product, but dropped that suit in February. Since the SEC’s retreat, state securities regulators in Kentucky, Vermont and South Carolina have also abandoned their own cases against the exchange.

The remaining states with staking-related suits against Coinbase include Alabama, California, Maryland, New Jersey, Washington and Wisconsin. Spokespeople for California, Maryland, and Wisconsin declined to comment on pending litigation.

A representative for the New Jersey Bureau of Securities told CoinDesk the “Coinbase matter remains open,” and Bill Beatty, securities administrator for the Washington Department of Financial Institutions said the state’s “case with Coinbase remains ongoing at this time.”

The Alabama Securities Commission did not return CoinDesk’s request for comment.

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Dogecoin Volatility Surge: From Stability to Dramatic Decline

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Recent Price Action Shows Signs of Recovery

In the last 100 minutes of trading, DOGE has demonstrated a notable recovery pattern, climbing from a local bottom of $0.156 to stabilize around $0.158.

The price action shows an apparent V-shaped recovery with significant volume spikes (16-21 million) during the bottoming process around 14:50-14:52, indicating strong buyer interest at support levels.

The $0.158-$0.159 zone has emerged as immediate potential resistance, with multiple tests showing decreasing selling pressure. This recovery aligns with the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level from the recent decline, suggesting potential continuation toward the 50% retracement at $0.160 if current momentum persists.

Dogecoin Technical Indicators

Price Range: DOGE traded between $0.179–$0.156, representing a 12.7% swing.

Volatility: 48-hour annualized volatility reached 86.3%, significantly above market norms.

Support/Resistance: Breakdown of $0.165 support level with new critical support zone at $0.158–$0.160.

Fibonacci Levels: Potential stabilization at the 61.8% retracement level ($0.162).

Volume Analysis: High-volume selling pressure followed by significant volume spikes (16–21 million) during recovery.

Recovery Pattern: V-shaped recovery from $0.156 to $0.158 with decreasing selling pressure at resistance.

Retracement Levels: Current price action aligns with 38.2% Fibonacci retracement with the potential move toward a 50% level at $0.160.

Disclaimer: This article was generated with AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy. This article may include information from external sources, which are listed below when applicable.

External References:

Times Tabloid, “Dogecoin (DOGE) Next Significant Rally? 7 Critical Levels to Watch,” accessed Apr. 3, 2025

Bitzo, “Market Weakness Strikes: Are DOGE, SHIB Set to Recover in April?” accessed Apr. 3, 2025

Times Tabloid, “Dogecoin (DOGE) at a Critical Turning Point as Key Levels Dictate Its Next Move,” accessed Apr. 3, 2025

Coinpedia, “Will Dogecoin (DOGE) Crash or Skyrocket?,” accessed Apr. 3, 2025

Finbold, “Anxiety Grips Dogecoin Holders as Major Sentiment Flips Into Bear Territory,” accessed Apr. 3, 2025

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Luxor’s Aaron Forster on Bitcoin Mining’s Growing Sophistication

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Luxor Technology wants to make bitcoin mining easier. That’s why the firm has rolled out a panoply of products (mining pools, hashrate derivatives, data analytics, ASIC brokerage) to help bitcoin miners, large and small, develop their operations.

Aaron Forster, the company’s director of business development, joined in October 2021, and has seen the team grow from roughly 15 to 85 people in the span of three and a half years.

Forster worked a decade in the Canadian energy sector before coming to bitcoin mining, which is one of the reasons why he’ll be speaking about the future of mining in Canada and the U.S. at the BTC & Mining Summit at Consensus this year, May 14-15.

In the lead-up to the event, Forster shared with CoinDesk his thoughts on bitcoin miners turning to artificial intelligence, the growing sophistication of the mining industry, and how Luxor’s products enable miners to hedge various forms of risk.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mining pools allow miners to combine their computational resources to have higher chances of receiving bitcoin block rewards. Can you explain to us how Luxor’s mining pools work?

Aaron Forster: Mining pools are basically aggregators that reduce the variance of solo mining. When you look at solo mining, it’s very lottery-esque, meaning that you could be plugging your machines in and you might hit block rewards tomorrow — or you might hit it 100 years from now. But you’re still paying for energy during that time. At a small scale, it’s not a big deal, as you scale that up and create a business around it.

The most common kind of mining pool is PPLNS, which means Pay-Per-Last-N-Shares. Basically, that means the miner does not get paid unless that mining pool hits the block. That’s also due to luck variance, so it’s no different from that solo miner’s situation. However, that creates revenue volatility for those large industrial miners.

So we’re seeing the emergence of what we call Full-Pay-Per-Share, or FPPS, and that’s Luxor is operating for our bitcoin pool. With FPPS, regardless of whether we find a block or not, we’re still paying our miners their revenue based on the number of shares they’ve submitted to the pool. That gives revenue certainty to miners, assuming hashprice stays the same. We’ve effectively become an insurance provider.

The problem is that you need a very deep and strong balance sheet to support that model, because while we’ve reduced the variance for miners, that risk is now put on us. So we need to plan for that. But it can be calculated over a long enough period of time. We have different partners in that regard, so that we don’t bear the full risk from our balance sheet.

Tell me about your ASIC brokerage business.

We’ve become one of the leading hardware suppliers on the secondary market. Primarily within North America, but we’ve shipped to 35+ countries. We deal with everybody from public companies to private companies, institutions to retail.

We’re primarily a broker, meaning we match buyer and seller, mostly on the secondary market. Sometimes we do interact with ASIC manufacturers, and in certain cases we do take principal positions, meaning we use money from our balance sheet to purchase ASICs and then resell them on the secondary market. But the majority of our volume comes from matching buyers and sellers.

Luxor also launched the first hashrate futures contracts.

We’re trying to push the Bitcoin mining space forward. We’re a hashrate marketplace, depending on how you look at our mining pools, and we wanted to take a big leap and take hashrate to the TradFi world.

We wanted to create a tool that allows investors to take a position on hashprice without effectively owning mining equipment. Hashprice is, you know, the hourly or daily revenue that miners get, and that fluctuates a lot. For some people it’s about hedging, for others it’s speculation. We’re creating a tool for miners to sell their hashrate forward and use it as a basic collateral or a way to finance growth.

We said, ‘Let’s allow miners to basically sell forward hashrate, receive bitcoin upfront, and then they can take that and do whatever they need to do with it, whether it’s purchase ASICs or expand their mining operations.’ It’s basically the collateralization of hashrate. So they’re obligated to send us X amount of hashrate per month for the length of the contract. Before that, they’ll receive a certain amount of bitcoin upfront.

There’s a market imbalance between buyers and sellers. We have a lot of buyers, meaning people and institutions wanting to earn yield on their bitcoin. What you’re lending your bitcoin at is effectively your interest rate. However, you could also look at it like you’re purchasing that hashrate at a discount. That’s important for institutions or folks that don’t want physical exposure to bitcoin mining, but want exposure to hash price or hashrate. They can do that synthetically through purchasing bitcoin and putting it into our market, effectively lending that out, earning a yield, and purchasing that hashrate at a discount.

What do you find most exciting about bitcoin mining at the moment?

The acceptance and natural progression of our industry into other markets. We can’t ignore the AI HPC transition. Instead of building these mega mines that are just massive buildings with power-dense bitcoin mining operations, you’re starting to see large miners turning into power infrastructure providers for artificial intelligence.

Using bitcoin mining as a stepping stone to a larger, more capital intensive industry like AI is exciting to me, because it kind of gives us a bit more acceptance, because we’re coming at it from a completely different angle. I think the biggest example is the Core Scientific-CoreWeave deal structure, how they’ve kind of merged those two businesses together. They’re complimentary to each other. And that’s really exciting.

When you look at our own product roadmap, we have no choice but to follow a similar roadmap to bitcoin miners. A lot of the products that we built for the mining industry are analogous to what is needed at a different level for AI. Mind you, it’s a lot simpler in our industry than in AI. We’re our first step into the HPC space, and it’s still very early days there.

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