SEC Chair Paul Atkins pledges to move financial markets onchain
The SEC begins a new chapter in its crypto love affair
Art by Crystal Le
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SEC Chair Paul Atkins dropped a crypto market bombshell this morning.
“Today I am announcing the launch of ‘Project Crypto’ — a Commission-wide initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America’s financial markets to move onchain,” Atkins said in a speech to the America First Policy Institute.
Atkins’ talk came a day after President Trump’s crypto working group released its report, which contained a slew of fairly boring crypto-linked policy suggestions.
Atkins has injected some excitement with his pledge to move financial markets onchain, though his speech was somewhat light on the particulars. Will onchain markets run alongside traditional financial rails, or replace them altogether? Will those outside the US be allowed to invest? Curious observers will have to wait on more concrete answers.
“No one knows what it means but [it’s] provocative,” a host of crypto podcast The Rollup said of Atkins’ pledge on X, channeling Blades of Glory.
Nonetheless, Atkins’ onchain-markets line feels like a new high-water mark in the crypto industry’s repaired marriage with US regulators. It’s one thing to drop a bunch of onerous lawsuits, as the SEC has. It’s another thing altogether to begin the process of moving the world’s largest financial markets onchain.
In other words, crypto replacing TradFi rails is quickly going from a crypto investor’s pipe dream to a crypto investor’s PIPE dream.
Blockworks co-founder Mike Ippolito asserted onchain financial markets are “[m]assively bullish Ethereum,” which makes sense given retail giant Robinhood’s planned move to begin tokenizing US equities on Arbitrum.
But Ethereum’s chief competitor in Solana will be looking to capitalize on the major shift in regulatory winds as well.
The Solana Policy Institute lobbying group has already begun pitching the SEC on a framework to compliantly bring tokenized securities onchain. The SPI asked the SEC for exemptive relief for blockchain infrastructure, which would essentially allow crypto infrastructure to operate outside of existing regulations. Based on Atkins’ speech this morning, it seems like the SEC may be happy to oblige.
“I’m absolutely blown away by the breadth of the ambition of the agenda laid out in Chair Atkins’ speech. Project Crypto, led by the SEC, is going to revolutionize financial markets generally, and ensure that the US remains at the forefront of Internet Capital Markets,” Solana Policy Institute CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine, who attended Atkins’ speech today, said.
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