SEC Chair Atkins Doubles Down on Project Crypto: 'We Want to Embrace Innovation'

By Sander Lutz

SEC Chair Paul Atkins reiterated Tuesday that the financial regulator is making a clean break with its crypto enforcement approach of the past, and pledged that most digital asset projects will soon have little to fear when it comes to securities regulation.

“It is a new day,” Atkins said during an appearance at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, held at the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole. “I feel your pain.”

The SEC chair specifically emphasized that, under his tenure, the regulator would never again pursue regulation by enforcement against crypto projects. 

“Now it’s different,” he said. “Now we want to embrace innovation.”

Last month, Atkins unveiled “Project Crypto,” a sweeping initiative intended to attract crypto businesses to the United States, largely by loosening existing securities regulations that could risk impacting industry projects. 

As a part of the initiative, Atikins pledged that the SEC will in short order begin offering purpose-fit disclosures, exemptions, and safe harbors for a wide range of crypto offerings including ICOs, airdrops, and network rewards.

Atkins added Tuesday that, in what he said marked a sharp divergence from the views of past SEC chairs, he believes that the vast majority of crypto tokens are not, by their nature, securities.

“There are very few tokens in my mind that are securities,” Atkins said. “But it depends on what’s the package around it.”

Last month’s Project Crypto announcement was coordinated to roll out just a day after the Trump administration released a 168-page recommendation on crypto policy, which directed the SEC to consider loosening several categories of regulations for crypto companies and projects.

Already, powerful crypto firms and lobbying groups have rushed to attempt to tailor potential SEC exemptions to their preferences.

Last week, for instance, Andreessen Horowitz and the DeFi Education Fund formally requested that the regulator shield developers of decentralized apps dealing in securities from risk of SEC enforcement, even in cases where said apps are centrally controlled.

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