Trump taps crypto enthusiast Paul Atkins to lead the SEC and Gail Slater as the new tech antitrust cop

By Elisabeth Buchwald and Brian Fung, CNN

New York (CNN) — The crypto and tech communities finally have some clarity on who they’ll potentially answer to over the next four years.

On the crypto front, President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is expected to regulate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin with a lighter touch than Gary Gensler, who led the commission under the Biden administration.

Atkins served as co-chairman of the 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 are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

On the tech front, Trump intends 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 Assistant Attorney General.

For tech, a bit to fear with a bit to celebrate

Trump announced his intention to nominate Slater on Wednesday in a post on Truth Social, highlighting his expectations the DOJ will continue to prosecute large tech platforms for alleged competition abuses.”

Big Tech has run 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 saw to completion, resulting this year in the most significant anti-monopoly ruling against a tech giant in a generation.

Now, he wants a longtime Beltway insider to keep up the pressure. Slater didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Slater has a lengthy track record on technology policy. A former legal adviser at the Federal Trade Commission, Slater has handled antitrust investigations involving the tech and pharmaceutical industries. At the time, Slater worked 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 has also previously represented Fox as its senior vice president for policy and strategy and, more recently, served as a vice president and deputy general counsel at Roku.

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

For crypto, a lot to celebrate

In the span of just one hour since Trump posted on Truth Social announcing he picked Atkins to head the SEC, bitcoin jumped by over $1,000 and continued to rally, a testament to the crypto community’s approval of Trump’s move.

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

In addition to banks and financial technology groups, Patomak serves crypto-related clients, including exchanges and companies looking to integrate digital currencies into their businesses.

In working with the Digital Chamber’s Token Alliance, Atkins has helped develop a set of best practices for regulating crypto. He’s largely viewed as someone who will have a much more hands-off approach if confirmed as SEC chair when it comes to efforts to clamp down on crypto usage.

Atkins previously worked with Trump during his first term as a member of his economic advisory group, which also featured CEOs, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, General Motors’ Mary Barra and Blackrock’s Larry Fink.

On the campaign trail, Trump worked hard to court the crypto community, promising to usher in a wave of pro-crypto policies, including creating a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” and holding on to bitcoin the government seizes from criminals rather than auctioning it off, which is the current practice.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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