SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has unveiled the agency’s upcoming regulatory agenda, prioritizing clarity over litigation. The long-awaited roadmap targets issuance, custody, and exchange trading rules, signaling a definitive end to regulation-by-enforcement.
Summary
- SEC Chairman Paul Atkins unveiled Spring 2025 agenda to integrate crypto into traditional markets.
- Agenda shifts focus from enforcement to rulemaking on issuance, custody, and trading.
- The move marks a sharp break from the Gensler era of lawsuits and regulatory crackdowns.
In a statement issued on Sept. 4, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins unveiled the Commission’s Spring 2025 regulatory agenda, formally tasking staff with crafting rules to bring digital assets into the fold of traditional market infrastructure.
The agenda directs the agency to propose amendments that would allow crypto assets to trade on national securities exchanges and alternative trading systems, a move that directly addresses one of the industry’s longest-standing pleas for regulatory clarity.
“The agenda covers potential rule proposals related to the offer and sale of crypto assets to help clarify the regulatory framework for crypto assets and provide greater certainty to the market. A key priority of my Chairmanship is clear rules of the road for the issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets while continuing to discourage bad actors from violating the law,” Atkins said.
A departure from the enforcement-first era
The SEC’s new agenda embodies a philosophical change that has been underway since the change in administration. The Biden-era SEC, under Chair Gary Gensler, pursued a different strategy, initiating over 125 crypto-related enforcement actions during its tenure.
This approach culminated in high-profile lawsuits against major exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, creating a climate of legal uncertainty that industry executives argued stifled innovation in the United States.
According to a Cornerstone Research report, while enforcement hit a record high in monetary penalties in 2024, the number of cases brought by the Gensler-led SEC fell by 30% from the previous year, signaling a potential slowdown even before the official transition. The Trump administration’s SEC has since dropped a significant number of these cases, marking a tangible and dramatic retreat from the previous litigious posture.
Nasdaq scrutiny
This new regulatory clarity from the top appears to be causing a ripple effect across the market infrastructure. Paradoxically, as the SEC moves to welcome crypto onto regulated exchanges, those same platforms are intensifying their own internal scrutiny.
According to The Information, Nasdaq is stepping up oversight of publicly traded companies that raise capital to purchase large crypto holdings, a strategy it suspects some firms have used to artificially inflate their stock price.
The report said the exchange is now delaying approvals and demanding detailed disclosures for such moves, aiming to prevent market manipulation and to ensure that corporate crypto integration is sustainable and transparent, not merely a short-term stock pump.
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