Trump picks former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to lead agency: CNBC Crypto World

Today, Trump taps former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to lead the agency in yet another pro-crypto move. And Joe McCann of the crypto hedge fund Asymmetric reacts to the planned nomination and what it means for the industry. Welcome to CBC's Crypto World. I'm Jordan Smith. Crypto markets mixed this morning as a new news turn Bitcoin lost a quarter of one percent and was trading at $94,900. Ether jumped nearly 6% to $3,758 and Solana gained one and a quarter percent. All right, let's talk about the top stories. Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of collapsed crypto lending platform Celsius, has pleaded guilty to fraud. Yesterday, the former CEO pleaded guilty to committing securities and commodities fraud and faces a possible maximum sentence of 30 years. Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July of 2022 and Mashinsky was arrested in July of 2023. He and the company were also sued by the SEC and CFTC, accusing him and Celsius Network of defrauding customers. The former crypto lending platform exited bankruptcy earlier this year and has since focused on Bitcoin mining. Next, OpenAI has hired its first chief marketing officer from Coinbase. Kate Rue led Coinbase's marketing efforts since 2021 and worked on various projects, including those Super Bowl QR ads back in 2022. On an ex-post, she reflected on her time at Coinbase, saying that Coinbase was the hardest and greatest thing she's ever done and that the Her role as OpenAI's chief marketing officer starts Monday. Finally, we've got some breaking news out of the Trump transition team. Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner, has been tapped by President-elect Trump to lead that agency. On a Truth Social post this afternoon, Trump said that Atkins, quote, recognizes that digital assets and other innovations are crucial to making America greater than ever before. Earlier, I spoke with Joe McCann of Crypto Hedge Fund Asymmetric about what the news means for the crypto industry. All right, Joe, thank you so much for joining me to talk about Paul Atkins as potential SEC chair under a Trump administration. And it seems to me like the biggest draw for the industry, for the crypto industry, is that he comes from this consulting firm that advises a small number of crypto clients. There was some reporting that he's potentially looking at cleaning up a, quote, mess at the agency. He's a former SEC commissioner under George W. Bush. Tell me from your perspective what the idea of Paul Atkins as SEC chair means for crypto specifically. Yeah, I mean, I think all you have to do is look at the guy's pedigree. Right. So when he was at the SEC previously, one of the things that he did was he took over at the time the largest Ponzi scheme in the United States out of bankruptcy and actually generated a 2000% return for shareholders. This guy knows how to get things done, knows how to protect, I would say, you know, citizens and consumers as it relates to securities and investments. But more importantly, back in even in 2022, at his consulting firm that he that he's at, you know, he came out and said, the SAB 121 ruling for the banks, which is effectively making it impossible for banks to custody cryptocurrencies should be clarified for how to custody cryptocurrency. So this is a guy that brings common sense to the SEC, which I think is extremely well received by the crypto industry, but most importantly, the entrepreneurs and investors in the United States that want to, you know, safely and from a regulatory standpoint, invest and participate in crypto. I should mention that it was CoinDesk that was reporting this news that he was potentially reluctant to take the job simply because he believed that there was a lot to change at the SEC when it comes to regulation around crypto and the agency broadly. I guess I'm curious, what does deregulation look like for crypto? You know, the industry has been explicitly asking for more rules from Congress, from the government. So it's saying it wants regulatory oversight, but at the same time, we're talking about a potential deregulatory environment when it comes to changing leadership of the SEC. What does the kind of regulation look like here? Yeah, I mean, I think on the one hand, there's absolutely parts of the U.S. government in general that need to be deregulated. It takes forever to get something physically built in this country. That should probably change. However, on the crypto side, we don't have clear regulatory frameworks, right? So, you know, I don't want to speak for all investors in the United States here, but we have been begging for this type of thing for quite some time because we want to know what the rules are, because we want to operate within those rules. And I think that part of the job that he'll do at the SEC is, yes, there's going to be some deregulation happening in traditional markets that are going to enable, I would hope, additional innovation and growth of the broader economy from the deregulatory actions that he should enact. But on the crypto side, I mean, just as an example, removing something like SAB 121 or providing clarity around, you know, commodities versus securities, etc. This is something that we've been asking for for quite some time and can actually lead to a lot of additional innovation here in the United States. So should the industry be paying attention to what's happening at the SEC more, or should it be what's happening on Capitol Hill when it comes to regulation? Because a lot of what the industry has been asking for isn't exactly what one agency can do. We're talking about rules getting passed. And I'm just wondering if a lot of hope is being put on a potential change of SEC chair rather than the amount of work it's going to take to move something through committees, move it through, you know, votes on the floor of the House and then in the Senate. What should people really be looking at here when it comes to the SEC? I mean, the short answer is all of it, right? You can't look at the current SEC enforcement actions today without looking at the politically motivated parts of, say, the U.S. Senate or just the Biden administration more broadly. By decoupling that or kind of unwinding it, you can actually start to look at what would the SEC be doing specifically? What would the CFTC be doing specifically? But I think more importantly, the Trump administration has effectively said they're looking at creating some sort of crypto council to get smart about this. And this is what I think is a key point of having someone like Atkins come in, is you're not having somebody that's an academic. You're actually having someone from the private sector and also bringing people in that have been building in this industry for quite some time, which is ultimately what you need to kind of break the logjam that exists in D.C., whether it's the tight coupling of folks like Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren, or it's just spreading out what can be done across the U.S. government to enable innovation more broadly, thus crypto benefiting from that. You mentioned there that President-elect Trump was considering sort of a pro-crypto position within his administration to look at the issues of the industry. And I wonder if this pick of Paul Atkins fits into this idea that Trump has said that he is the pro-crypto candidate on the campaign trail. He is now potentially pro-crypto president. Is this latest pick fitting into that strategy from the president-elect? I mean, I think it's hard to debate the fact that Paul Atkins is pro-digital assets and pro-crypto. You see the commentary that he did in 2022 as it relates to and that seems pretty evident to me. This fits in alignment, I think, with what Trump is looking to do around this broader crypto policies. Paul seems like a steady hand. He is a conservative, but he has actual experience in the private sector as well as the SEC. I don't really see a better fit for the type of individual he would want to bring in to usher in a pro-crypto and pro-innovation platform. All right. That's all for Crypto World today. We're back again tomorrow. We'll see you then.