President-elect Donald Trump is expected to select a new chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the coming days. His team is asking the crypto industry to weigh in on potential picks, according to sources who claim to be close to proceedings.
Trump’s shortlist is filled with former government officials, crypto executives, and lawyers who support the crypto industry: Paul Atkins, former SEC commissioner, and Brian Brooks, former acting US comptroller of the currency, are the top two contenders, sources familiar tell WIRED, but the vetting process is ongoing.
Other candidates include SEC commissioner Mark Uyeda, former SEC general counsel Robert Stebbins, and Brad Bondi, the global cochair of investigations and white collar defense at the law firm Paul Hastings, WIRED understands. The chief legal officer for Robinhood, Dan Gallagher, was also up for the role but bowed out of the race over the weekend.
Uyeda declined to comment. Neither the Trump transition team, Atkins, Brooks, Stebbins, nor Bondi responded to a request for comment.
To help craft policy and implement his campaign pledges, Trump is also expected to appoint a crypto czar. The czar would lead a board of advisers comprising a colorful cast of crypto characters, sources tell WIRED. A variety of industry leaders are rumored to be in line for a position on the panel, from companies like Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken, as well as pro-crypto venture capital firms and crypto mining outfits.
Jonathan Jachym, global head of policy and government relations at Kraken, declined to comment on the competition for places on the advisory council, but says the company welcomes the opportunity to steer crypto policy under the Trump administration. “We take our leadership role in the industry very seriously, and that includes informing and driving regulatory clarity and policy outcomes,” he says. Gemini declined to comment. Coinbase did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Under Gary Gensler, the sitting SEC chair, the crypto industry has faced what many in its ranks allege to be an unjust and targeted barrage of litigation. Among the crypto faithful, Gensler has become something of a cartoon villain. Tyler Winklevoss, cofounder of crypto exchange Gemini, recently went as far as to describe him as “evil.”
In July, at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump pledged to fire Gensler if reelected, drawing perhaps the most raucous applause of the night. “I will appoint an SEC chair who will build the future, not block the future,” Trump said.
Last week, Gensler announced that he would resign from his office on January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Representatives of the industry in which Gensler has become so maligned are now helping to pick out his successor, sources tell WIRED.
The promise of an SEC overhaul was one of many made to the crypto industry by Trump on the campaign trail. At the Nashville conference, he pledged to cement the US as the foremost bitcoin mining powerhouse, create a national “bitcoin stockpile,” and establish a framework for stablecoin businesses, singing from the crypto hymn sheet.
In June, Trump hosted executives from the crypto mining industry at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida. “We had a very long, in-depth discussion with him—and he was very interested. He was very engaged and asked great questions,” says Brian Morgenstern, head of public policy at bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms and a former official in the first Trump administration, who was in attendance.
Trump has even begun to dabble in crypto himself. Over the summer, his campaign began accepting crypto donations, and his sons launched their own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which he helped to promote. Last Thursday, The New York Times reported that Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, filed a trademark application for what was described as a crypto payment service called TruthFi.
Figures allied with the crypto industry have already been appointed to Trump’s cabinet. His pick for Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, leads the financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald, which manages assets for Tether, operator of the world’s largest stablecoin. Likewise, vice president-elect JD Vance, nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and coleader of the new Department of Government Efficiency Vivek Ramaswamy have all expressed pro-crypto views.
“Based on what I’ve heard in private conversations, my perspective has been that the incoming administration is taking their pro-bitcoin and crypto campaign promises very seriously and intend to do a robust assessment of options to optimize [appointments to regulatory positions] as best they can,” says Christopher Calicott, managing director at bitcoin-focused VC firm Trammell Venture Partners.
The price of bitcoin has risen to record heights, just shy of $100,000 per coin, since Trump won reelection earlier this month.
“The entire industry is going to have much brighter prospects on a number of different fronts,” says Morgenstern. “We don’t have any reason to doubt President Trump.”
