Paul Atkins, the former member of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which President Donald Trump has tapped to run the agency, assured another direction for the agency of Crypto from the last four years, although he was not pressed with large images of digital assets during a Thursday confirmation hearing.

Now that Trump has secured cabinet-level-Echelon from his government, the White House is working on Shephering Top Agency Chiefs through Senate’s confirmation process. While many of the crypto headlines come from the administration and Congress these days, those who run the regulatory agencies will ultimately be those who write the rules that the industry must comply with.

Atkins is trying to be the successor of ex-chairman Gary Gensler, whose years at the agency established him as the digital assets of the sector’s most prominent nemesis. But Trump’s nominees are already in stark contrast to genes criticizing the history of the industry with scammers and claiming that the current securities law was sufficient to treat much of the space as if it were in active violation of the registration requirements.

“A highest priority of my presidency will be to work with my fellow commissioners and congress to provide a firm legislative foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent and principled approach,” Atkins said in his prepared testimony on Thursday.

Senator Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican, who is chairman of the committee, said Atkins will “give long-term clarity for digital assets.”

But even before the hearing began, Atkins was slammed by Senator Elizaber Warren, Massachusett’s legislature, the committee’s ranking Democrat who recorded doubts about his ability to be impartial to the digital assets he has served as an advisor.

On the consultation table next to Atkins, Gould made his case to take over the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator of national banks. OCC has been a significant player in the digital asset sector campaign against US banking supervision, which has pushed banks to keep the industry at an arm’s length. Crypto companies and insiders have struggled to maintain banking conditions and have claimed that the regulators wrote that “exhaustive” load.

The first question for Gould was about this situation where Scott asked if he would commit to reversing the earlier attitude that Gould responded to, “absolutely.”

For the Crypto industry, Atkins’ answer to crypto questions is potentially more urgent. But he was not asked about his views on the next step of cryptocurrency, nor of the legislative efforts ready to re -record American cryptopolitics.

SBF

At one point, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana raised the topic of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fred, who he said looks like a “fourth runner-up in a John Belushi-Lookalike competition,” and asked Atkins if SEC appropriately looked into SBF’s parents for their involvement in his fraudulent activities.

“I look forward to coming to SEC to find out what happened,” said Atkins. “Like you, I’m concerned about these reports.”

But Kennedy took it on and suggested a lack of accountability that signalizes “two standards of law and punishment” in the US

“I don’t think SEC has done a damn thing,” Kennedy said. “They are villains!” he cried. “And I expect SEC to do something about it.”

Few other senators dived into wider crypto questions, and those who might have been expected, such as Senator Cynthia Lummis, were not present. The hearing lasted only two hours and included four nominees for different offices, causing some Democrats to complain that this was not time enough to talk to each person.

Atkins’ most difficult moments were about his term of office as a SEC Commissioner in the upheaval of the meltdown in 2008 and the agency’s failure in the police for the mortgage papers contributing to this crisis. Atkins deflected the primary responsibility of the crisis as belonging to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The next step in the verification process is that the committee must vote on the nominees and forward them for potential approval of the total Senate.