For the first time in history, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission delivered a speech at a Bitcoin conference. Paul Atkins seized the moment To talk On regulatory limits, political risks, and why the Clarity Act is not just important, but necessary to protect everything the current crypto administration has built.
The SEC cannot do this alone
The SEC operates under an authority that is, he said, “basically the kind of thing that existed in the 1930s.” He can be smart. It can coordinate with the CFTC. But it cannot create lasting certainty without Congress.
“Nothing future-proofs like the law, then good opinions from the courts to carve in stone what the law says,” Atkins said.
He explained that without new legislation, everything the current SEC has built is based on guidance and good faith, not law. This is very important when political winds change.
The incoming administration is the real threat
Atkins admitted firsthand what the industry fears most. A future administration hostile to cryptocurrencies, backed by a law requiring new projects to classify securities, will have tools that the SEC did not have under Biden.
“Elections have consequences and they can be huge,” he added. “Who would have thought ten years ago that we would have had this almost complete 180-degree pivot by the United States government?”
The other side of this axis is clear. What one administration builds, the next administration can dismantle. Without a law to anchor the framework, the progress made over the past two years has no lasting foundation.
The SEC “is focused on trying to simplify things, trying to make things more efficient, trying to help innovators innovate so that they can do it with certainty and so they don’t get fooled by people who jealously guard their playing field against existing ways of doing things,” Atkins said.
The timeline and what needs to happen
Senate action is expected in May. A vote could follow in June. From there, the bill would need to pass the House of Representatives and reach the president’s desk.
“A lot of things have to happen. A lot of things have to line up for all of this to happen, which of course we hope will happen, but it’s not guaranteed,” he said.
For those who have watched previous legislative sessions come to a halt, the caution is familiar. But the stakes, Atkins explained, have never been higher.
Marked arrows: next frontier
Atkins pointed to tokenized stocks as a big near-term opportunity as the SEC sits in the awkward position of enabling or hindering innovation. Traditional stock settlement goes through multiple brokers, each of whom collects fees between executing the trade and its final settlement. Blockchain can eliminate a lot of this friction.
“The Commission is in a really important position to enable this innovation to happen,” he said, acknowledging the challenge of engaging with stakeholders whose business models depend on the current structure.
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