U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins is turning a new page at the agency in how it views self-custody, describing it as a “foundational American value.”
In remarks delivered Monday at the SEC’s final Crypto Task Force Roundtable, titled “DeFi and the American Spirit,” Atkins hinted more of an openness toward self-custody, marking a departure from the previous administration.
“The right to have self-custody of one’s private property is a foundational American value that should not disappear when one logs onto the internet,” Atkins said Monday. “I am in favor of affording greater flexibility to market participants to self-custody crypto assets, especially where intermediation imposes unnecessary transaction costs or restricts the ability to engage in staking and other on-chain activities.”
Since President Donald Trump took office and following former SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s departure, the agency has taken a warmer approach to crypto in part through dropping enforcement actions against major crypto industry players and creating the crypto task force. The task force has hosted five roundtable discussions over the past few months with a focus on tokenization, custody, trading, and defining securities.
Atkins has criticized the agency’s previous approach, and on Monday, accused the agency of undermining the innovation in self-custody by asserting that developers could be brokers, and therefore, need to follow the SEC’s rules.
“I do not believe that we should allow century-old regulatory frameworks to stifle innovation with technologies that could upend and most importantly improve and advance our current, traditional intermediated model,” Atkins said. “We should not automatically fear the future.”
Atkins also said he asked SEC staff to look into next steps.
“I have asked the Commission staff to explore whether further guidance or rulemaking may be helpful for enabling registrants to transact with these software systems in compliance with applicable law,” he said.
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