The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has voted to advance the confirmations of President Donald Trump’s picks to run the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — both key positions for the future U.S. regulation of the crypto sector.
The nominations of Paul Atkins to permanently take over the SEC from former Chair Gary Gensler and of Jonathan Gould to lead the banking regulator OCC now move to consideration by the overall Senate. Approvals there will allow Atkins and Gould to start work at the regulatory agencies.
Atkins and Gould both advanced under party-line votes in the committee on Thursday — each going 13-11.
Committee Chairman Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, praised the nominees before the vote.
“Paul Atkins, the former SEC commissioner, will promote capital formation and provide much-needed clarity for digital assets,” Scott said. And of Gould, he said the nominee, once chief counsel at the OCC, will “put an end to the politically-motivated debanking” — a major point of complaint for the crypto industry.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued some last-minute criticisms of the nominees before rejecting all of them.
“Mr. Atkins was dead wrong in the leadup to the worst financial crisis in a generation,” she said of Atkins’ previous tenure at the SEC in the period before the 2008 global financial crisis, and she added of Gould’s previous time at the OCC that he “weakened the rules and helped undermine” the banking system’s safety and soundness.
The recent confirmation hearing for the nominees didn’t address crypto issues in significant depth, though both would be heavily involved in future regulation of the industry.
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