Paul Atkins, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, was confirmed by the Senate in a 52–44 vote on April 9.
Now SEC staff say they expect him to officially start his job this week. That’s what two employees told Crypto In America, and they’re already preparing for him to take over the agency.
Retail crypto traders have been asking questions online, especially on X, wondering why Atkins hasn’t already taken the job after getting the Senate’s approval. But officials in Washington said the delay is standard procedure. There’s paperwork to handle after a Senate vote, and the Easter holiday added extra lag time.
It’s not unusual, they said.
Paul Atkins could make it to this week’s crypto roundtable
If he starts this week, Atkins could show up at the SEC’s third crypto policy roundtable on Friday. That event is still scheduled even though Congress is on break. It will focus on custody issues — who holds crypto, how they hold it, and what the rules should be.
There will be two panel discussions. One will focus on custody by broker-dealers and wallet providers. The other will cover investment advisers and crypto companies that manage other people’s assets. People from Fidelity, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, and Fireblocks are all on the panel list. A few law firms will also join.
Atkins is stepping into a completely different regulatory environment than his predecessor. Gary Gensler ran the SEC like a bulldozer. He targeted the $2.7 trillion crypto market hard and pushed rules like climate disclosure requirements for public companies. Now that Gensler’s gone, the SEC is about to be led by someone who sees things differently.
Atkins has already made his views public. He said his top goal is to create a clear set of rules for crypto, and he wants that framework to be what he calls “rational, coherent, and principled.” He’s also pushing to take politics out of SEC decision-making. In his words, the agency needs to stop letting politics dictate how it deals with financial markets.
While federal regulators stall, Oregon is stepping in. On Friday, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, filed a 171-page lawsuit against Coinbase. He’s accusing the company of running an illegal exchange and broker-dealer operation by offering unregistered securities to Oregon residents.
This lawsuit comes just two months after the SEC dropped its own case against Coinbase. Rayfield’s office said that decision left a gap in enforcement and called it a sign of a growing “enforcement vacuum” caused by federal rollbacks under the Trump administration. He compared investing in crypto without full information to “undergoing a medical procedure without knowing the risks.”
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