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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins said on Feb. 27 that the agency is working to recover ground on crypto oversight after what he described as a “big missed opportunity” under his predecessor. Speaking at a fireside chat at the University of Texas, Atkins criticized the regulatory approach under former Chair Gary Gensler, saying the agency had failed to adapt to financial innovation.
“This has been a big missed opportunity for the United States that we’re quickly trying to make up time for,” Atkins said. Under Gensler, the SEC pursued an enforcement-heavy strategy, asserting that many digital assets were securities and bringing numerous cases against firms largely over registration violations. Atkins did not offer specifics on where he believes the prior leadership went wrong, but framed the posture as one that stifled rather than structured the market.
Since the start of the Trump administration, the SEC has moved toward a more industry-aligned position. The agency established a dedicated crypto task force, dropped enforcement cases against several large industry participants, and launched “Project Crypto,” an internal initiative to modernize existing rules for digital assets. Atkins expressed particular interest in distributed ledger technology’s potential for payment clearing and settlement systems, noting that individual cryptocurrency prices may fluctuate but the underlying technology carries longer-term relevance.
Earlier in the same week, the SEC granted WisdomTree exemptive relief allowing its WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund to operate with 24/7 trading and instant settlement, the first fund of its kind in the U.S. to receive that approval. Atkins referenced the development at the Texas event. “We’ve approved tokenized money market mutual funds, and to come will be tokenized bank deposits,” he said.
The WisdomTree decision signals a broader shift in the agency’s appetite for approving blockchain-based financial products that had previously stalled under the prior administration. Tokenized bank deposits would represent an extension of the same framework, applying instant blockchain settlement to traditional deposit instruments.
Atkins did not provide a timeline for further rule changes or specify which enforcement cases may remain active under the revised posture. The SEC’s crypto task force has been meeting with industry participants since early 2025 as part of its review of existing frameworks.
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Source: coinmarketcap.com