Trump names crypto enthusiast Paul Atkins as head of the SEC and Gail Slater as new tech antitrust cop

Trump names crypto enthusiast Paul Atkins as head of the SEC and Gail Slater as new tech antitrust cop


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CNN

The crypto and technology community finally has clarity about who they may be answerable to over the next four years.

In the crypto space, President-elect Donald Trump plans to appoint Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is expected to regulate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin less stringently than Gary Gensler, who led the commission under the Biden administration.

Atkins has served as co-chair of crypto advocacy group Digital Chamber’s Token Alliance since 2017.

“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that respond to investor needs and provide capital to make our economy the best in the world.” He also recognizes that digital assets and other innovations are critical to making America greater than ever done before.”

In technology, Trump plans to nominate Gail Slater, a former Fox Corporation executive and economic policy adviser in the first Trump administration, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division as deputy attorney general.

Trump announced his intention to nominate Slater in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, emphasizing his expectations that the Justice Department will continue to prosecute major tech platforms for alleged antitrust violations.”

“Big Tech has been running wild for years,” Trump wrote, “stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans as well as those of Little Tech!”

Trump has long criticized the tech industry. During his first term, Trump’s Justice Department sued Google for monopolizing the online search market, a case that the Biden administration brought to a close, resulting in the most significant anti-monopoly ruling against a tech giant in a generation this year.

Now he wants a longtime Beltway insider to keep up the pressure. Slater did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Slater has a long track record in technology policy. As a former general counsel to the Federal Trade Commission, Slater has conducted antitrust investigations in the technology and pharmaceutical industries. At the time, Slater was working under Democratic FTC Commissioner Julie Brill.

In 2018, Slater went to the Trump White House to develop the administration’s policies on 5G wireless telecommunications, privacy and cybersecurity.

Slater also previously represented Fox as senior vice president of policy and strategy and more recently served as vice president and deputy general counsel at Roku.

But she has also been the voice of some of the technology industry’s biggest players, serving as general counsel at the Internet Association for more than three years. Although the trade group folded in 2021, it was considered the most powerful tech industry association of its time, representing Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, among others.

Within just an hour since Trump announced on Truth Social that he had appointed Atkins to head the SEC, Bitcoin rose over $1,000 and continued its upward trend, a testament to the crypto community’s approval of Trump’s move .

Atkins, an SEC commissioner for six years under former President George W. Bush, is the founder and CEO of Pomak Global Partners, a financial services consulting group.

In addition to banks and financial technology groups, Pomak serves customers in the crypto space, including exchanges and companies looking to integrate digital currencies into their businesses.

Working with the Digital Chamber’s Token Alliance, Atkins has helped develop a set of best practices for crypto regulation. He is widely seen as someone who, if confirmed as SEC chairman, will take a much more cautious approach to cracking down on the use of cryptocurrencies.

On the campaign trail, Trump worked hard to woo the crypto community, promising to usher in a wave of pro-crypto policies, including the creation of a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile” and the safekeeping of Bitcoin that the government would use from criminals confiscated them instead of auctioning them, which is the current practice.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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