Atkins Marks One Year Leading the SEC: Cryptocurrency Regulation Fully Shifts

Author: Turner Wright

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: On April 21, 2025, Paul Atkins was sworn in as Chairman of the SEC, and it has been exactly one year so far. During this year, the SEC has withdrawn multiple lawsuits against crypto companies, approved several crypto ETFs, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the CFTC on regulatory coordination for digital assets. However, accusations by Democratic lawmakers of conflicts of interest involving Atkins have also been intensifying, and the SEC is still waiting for Congress to pass the Market Structure Act to clarify the scope of its jurisdiction over crypto assets.

On April 21, 2025, Paul Atkins was sworn in as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Today marks exactly one year.

Over this past year, the SEC has made a fundamental shift in its regulatory and enforcement posture toward digital assets—sharply contrasting with the approach taken under former Chairman Gary Gensler.

During the 2024 election, Trump wrote several checks to the crypto industry: replacing Gensler, establishing a national Bitcoin (BTC) reserve, and opposing the issuance of a U.S. central bank digital currency. After winning the November 2024 election, Gensler resigned in January 2025. SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda temporarily served as acting chair until the Senate confirmed Atkins’s nomination.

Caption: SEC Chairman Paul Atkins being interviewed on CNBC Squawk Box on April 20, 2026

Source: CNBC

Even before Atkins took office, the SEC was already pivoting

Before Atkins officially took over, the SEC began sending signals. During Uyeda’s interim tenure, the SEC set up a crypto working group led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, and starting in February 2025, it gradually withdrew civil enforcement actions and investigations against crypto companies, with Coinbase being the first.

In the 12 months after Atkins officially took office, the SEC rolled out a series of policies that the industry generally sees as positive:

Ending multiple enforcement actions against crypto companies

Approving multiple exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to various crypto assets

Signing a memorandum of understanding on digital asset regulatory coordination with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

Issuing interpretive notices clarifying that most cryptocurrencies do not constitute securities under federal law

Atkins himself said in an interview with CNBC on April 21: “The year has gone by quickly, but I think we’ve made great progress. When I took office, I promised the SEC a new day, and we delivered. We’ve moved away from the past approach of regulating through enforcement and opaque institutional operations— and the crypto space is the best example.”

Source: CFTC Chairman Michael Selig

Democratic lawmakers’ focus is on conflicts of interest

Most of the crypto industry welcomes Atkins’s approach, but criticism from congressional Democrats is also escalating. The focus is on this: some of the investigations and enforcement actions that the SEC withdrew involved companies linked to Trump and his family, raising potential conflicts of interest.

Last week, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren accused Atkins of misleading lawmakers during congressional testimony. In a letter dated April 15, Warren pointed out that the SEC’s own data for fiscal year 2025 shows the number of its enforcement actions has fallen to the lowest level in the past decade.

Even though the direction is clear—withdrawals of cases and regulatory loosening—the SEC is still waiting for Congress to pass the Market Structure Act to formally clarify the boundaries of its regulatory authority over crypto assets. Until the bill is enacted, the SEC’s crypto regulatory framework remains in a transitional state of “administrative guidance + case-by-case handling.”