US Senate confirms Paul Atkins to lead SEC under Trump

Update April 10 at 1:41 am UTC: This article has been updated to include background on Paul Atkins and to correct the vote count.

The US Senate has confirmed US President Donald Trump’s nominee, Paul Atkins, as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a 52-44 vote largely along party lines.

Atkins’ confirmation on April 9 comes after Trump named the pro-crypto former Wall Street consultant to lead the agency late last year. Atkins also served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008, during the global financial crisis.

”A veteran of our Commission, we look forward to him joining with us, along with our dedicated staff, to fulfill our mission on behalf of the investing public,” the agency’s commissioners wrote in an April 9 statement.

Atkins founded financial consulting firm Patomak Global Partners in 2009, specializing in regulatory compliance and risk management, and served as co-chair of crypto advocacy group Token Alliance between 2017 and late 2024.

After he’s sworn in, Atkins will take over from Mark Uyeda, who has been the SEC’s acting chair since Jan. 20, after former chair Gary Gensler stepped down. Gensler’s tenure saw the SEC launch multiple lawsuits and investigations against crypto firms over alleged breaches of securities laws.

Source: Cynthia Lummis

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott expressed confidence that Atkins would continue the SEC’s crypto-friendly approach that it has taken under the Trump administration.

Under Trump, the SEC created a Crypto Task Force to consult with the industry on regulation and dropped several crypto-related investigations and enforcement actions undertaken by the Gensler-led SEC.

Atkins is expected to take a different approach, telling a Senate confirmation hearing in March that a top priority of his at the SEC would be “to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent, and principled approach.”

Atkins’ confirmation was reportedly delayed due to several financial disclosures he needed to file as a result of marrying into a billionaire family.

Related: No crypto project has registered with the SEC and ‘lived to tell the tale’ — House committee hearing

He married Sarah Humphreys Atkins in 1990 — whose family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC, a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes reported in December. The couple have a reported combined net worth of at least $327 million.

Some of those financial disclosures revealed that Atkins owned up to $6 million worth of crypto-related investments, including crypto custody platform Anchorage Digital and blockchain tokenization platform Securitize, Fortune reported last month.

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