Chairman of America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), appointed by Donald Trump. He took up the role on April 21st 2025. Before his appointment he spent eight years as co-chairman of a cryptocurrency industry group. He previously worked at the SEC as a commissioner under President George W. Bush, where Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce served as his advisers. The three now hold three of the SEC's five top positions. Under his leadership the SEC has taken a far narrower view of which crypto assets are securities, halting more than a dozen enforcement actions against crypto firms, including cases against Coinbase, Crypto.com, Ripple Labs and Kraken. The SEC has also cut back its climate-change disclosure requirements and curtailed its enforcement division.
In December 2025 Atkins lamented that the diminution of public markets had "eroded American competitiveness, locked average investors out of some of the most dynamic companies and pushed entrepreneurs to seek capital elsewhere". The number of businesses listed in America has fallen by more than a third since the mid-1990s. The SEC is pursuing several remedies: it is drafting a proposal to allow listed firms to file reports twice a year rather than quarterly, looking to reduce disclosure mandates including those relating to climate change, and seeking to curb the power of proxy advisers and class-action litigants over bosses.
Chance is perhaps the work of God when He did not want to sign.