With Democrats favored by 75% to win the US House majority in 2026 on prediction market Kalshi, Representative Maxine Waters’ new criticism of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins’ crypto policies could gain more steam.
Although Congress remains on winter break, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee asked Atkins on Monday to testify before the committee, where she wants him to take responsibility for the dismissal of significant enforcement actions for digital assets.
“The SEC has terminated or sustained major enforcement actions against several crypto companies and individuals who had been credibly accused of major violations of our securities laws, including Coinbase, Binance and Justin Sun,” Waters wrote in a letter sent to the panel’s Republican chairman, Representative French Hill. “The committee has not examined the SEC’s rationale for abandoning these cases or how the agency intends to deter fraud and manipulation in markets that affect millions of retail investors.”
Waters argued that some of the companies freed from SEC cases announced the terminations before the commission actually voted on them, and she argued that Atkins’ office “took an unusually active role in negotiating an end to these cases.”Read more: Most Influential: Paul Atkins
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CoinDesk.
After the start of President Donald Trump’s administration, a leadership change at the agency — and the eventual confirmation of Atkins as its chairman — led the regulator to abandon a long list of legal battles it had waged with the crypto industry. Almost all of its pending cases were dropped, and it backed out of several ongoing lawsuits.
Trump has made it his mission to boost the US crypto industry, and Atkins has declared that same mission the top priority of the SEC, which was established as an independent federal regulator not intended to operate under the direct direction of the White House.
Waters, who has at times been an active negotiator on crypto legislation while also sharing industry criticism, said Atkins “frames the agency’s agenda as an instrument of administration.” She also noted that its many policy shifts have been carried out through staff statements rather than formal rules. That has routinely been the case for the crypto industry, which has enthusiastically embraced many of these statements as clarification of the agency’s position in the absence of clear digital asset laws. “This approach ignores the SEC’s legal obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act, forecloses the important role public comment provides in identifying problems, and hides from Congress and the public exactly what interests influence the SEC’s decision-making so that we cannot weigh the motives of the parties who shape SEC policy,” said Waters, who requested testing that the Atkins House join the panel.
Read more: US SEC chief warns watchdogs must be restrained from harnessing crypto’s power to snoop
