SEC Chair Atkins Launches Podcast on Crypto Regulation
SEC Chair Paul Atkins launched a podcast called Material Matters to demystify the agency. The first episode featured Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda discussing crypto regulation, with Uyeda criticizing former SEC Chair Gary Gensler's enforcement-heavy approach.
Key Takeaway
The SEC shifted from Gensler's enforcement blitz to Atkins' collaboration approach, dropping cases and creating a crypto task force.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency itself remains a mystery to many people and launched a podcast to change that.
The first episode of Material Matters ran 27 minutes and featured Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda discussing crypto regulation. Atkins said the digital asset area is now top of the SEC's list to get right. Peirce, known as crypto mom in the industry, explained that crypto solves the double spending problem and that disintermediation is powerful because intermediaries have sometimes walked away with customer money or been careless with it.
Uyeda used the podcast to criticize former SEC Chair Gary Gensler's tenure. He called the last four years a complete outlier to anything he'd seen over three decades as a corporate securities lawyer and described the period as unfortunate. Under Gensler, Uyeda said the agency acted as a business conduct regulator that would micromanage whether companies issued dividends or engaged in share repurchases. The industry referred to Gensler's approach as regulation-by-enforcement.
Gensler resigned in 2025 after bringing lawsuits against dozens of crypto companies following the 2022 FTX collapse. Biden appointed the Goldman Sachs alum to chair the SEC. Atkins founded business consultancy Patomak Global Partners, which counted crypto firms among its clients alongside banks, credit unions, insurance companies, e-commerce platforms, private equity funds and venture capital funds.
The SEC dismissed seven crypto registration cases in early 2025 and acknowledged that prior leadership had prioritized media headlines over measurable investor harm. Enforcement actions dropped more than 20 percent to 456 in 2025 from 583 the prior year. Critics called the decline a collapse of American securities regulation, but the agency characterized it as a necessary course correction.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce now leads a Crypto Task Force tasked with drawing clear regulatory lines, distinguishing securities from non-securities, crafting tailored disclosure frameworks and providing realistic paths to registration. The task force coordinates with relevant government regulators and deploys enforcement resources judiciously. The SEC published clarifications on how federal securities laws apply to crypto assets on March 17, 2026.
This article was written based on reporting from Dlnews.
