Trump Appoints Most Pro-Crypto SEC Chair Ever, Concept Token Sees 50% Intraday Volatility
On December 5, former United States President Donald Trump, a member of the Republican Party, announced on the Truth Social platform that he would nominate Paul Atkins as the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Trump wrote in the post:
“I am pleased to announce the nomination of Paul Atkins as the next Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Paul is a recognized leader in common-sense regulation. He believes that robust, innovative capital markets can meet the needs of investors and provide the capital to make our economy the best in the world. He also understands that digital assets and other innovations are crucial to making America great again.”
The current SEC Chairman, Gensler, is known for his aggressive approach, and his ambitious agenda has led to clashes with Wall Street and the crypto industry. Atkins, on the other hand, believes that resilient, innovative capital markets can meet the needs of investors and provide funding to further advance the U.S. economy. Market expectations are that Atkins will review multiple rules put in place during Gensler’s tenure, take a more moderate approach to cryptocurrency, and seek rule changes aimed at promoting capital formation.
Following the announcement, relevant concept tokens once again saw an uptrend. According to GMGN data, RSR surged over 12%, rising to $0.0231. The RSR concept meme token DTF also rose from $0.012 to $0.036, a short-term increase of 230% before pulling back to $0.0176.
The most “crypto-native” SEC Chairman, who is Paul Atkins?
Paul Atkins is a former SEC commissioner during the George W. Bush administration, known for his opposition to "imposing large fines on companies that violate securities laws," and previously opposed the strengthening of federal regulatory power post the 2008 financial crisis through the Dodd-Frank Act.
In 2016, Atkins played a key role in the political transition team after President Trump's election, influencing Trump's laissez-faire attitude towards financial regulation.
Currently, Atkins remains at Patomak Global Partners, a consulting firm he founded in 2009. Since 2017, he has also served as Co-Chair of the Token Alliance, an industry association advocating for digital assets and the blockchain industry.
The reason for the connection to RSR is that the community discovered Atkins had served as an advisor to the project.
Reserve founder Nevin Freeman had previously explained, "Paul is not currently actively advising Reserve; he was an early advisor, but his open-mindedness in our interactions impressed me, and his willingness to publicly associate himself with Reserve as an advisor indicates his commitment and support for the cryptocurrency space."
Subsequently, in a news aggregation account, db referenced Unchained's report and announced that after Trump chose Atkins to be the next SEC chairman, the price surged.
Unchained's original news article stated, "According to three informed sources, Trump has selected crypto-friendly Paul Atkins to be the SEC chairman. One source noted that Trump has been in touch with Atkins but is waiting for his formal acceptance of the appointment."
Less than twenty minutes later, another major news aggregation account, Watcher. Guru, released a statement saying, "Unable to confirm the rumors about President-elect Trump selecting Paul Atkins as SEC chairman. No official statement has been released by the Trump camp at this time."
According to Coindesk, an individual familiar with Atkins' thinking said Atkins is hesitant about leaving his global consulting firm to clean up what he considers a poorly managed and bloated institution under the soon-to-depart SEC chair, Gary Gensler.
Shortly thereafter, another major news outlet, Formula, sent out a notification stating that trader GCR had mentioned in Discord that he had sold RSR a long time ago, but this message has since been deleted.
The trading news dissemination process mentioned above led to a sharp rise and fall in RSR and DTF within a short period, essentially reflecting the current market's emotional speculation based on the SEC chairman outcome.
Currently, the compliance prediction platform Kalshi's data shows that the probability of Paul Atkins becoming the next SEC Chairman has risen to 88%.
Previously, according to FOX Business reporter Eleanor Terrett, Trump is expected to announce his pick for SEC Chairman as soon as today. She stated that Paul Atkins, a seasoned financial regulator and conservative financial industry insider, is the most likely potential candidate. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has also interviewed Paul Atkins, and two sources close to Mar-a-Lago have revealed that among the senior members of Trump's transition team, former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins has the highest chance of becoming the SEC Chairman.
SEC Chairman Hype Concepts
RSR
Reserve Rights (RSR) is a dual-token stablecoin platform launched on the Huobi Prime platform in May 2019. Reserve aims to establish a stable, decentralized stablecoin and digital payment system, with stablecoin features that combine on-demand self-adjusting supply and have 100% or more on-chain collateral backing.
The main issue RSR attempts to address is volatility, as the volatility of cryptocurrencies has limited the market's expansion as an exchange medium. Due to concerns about potential profit loss during market downturns, merchants have been reluctant to accept cryptocurrencies. The Reserve protocol provides the market with a stable store of value, medium of exchange, and deferred payment standard. Today, the focus of the Reserve Rights ecosystem is to help individuals, treasuries, and DAOs combat inflation.
The total supply of RSR is 100,000,000,000 tokens, with a current market cap of $1,390,407,126 and TVL of $278,254,588.
DTF
DTF is a meme coin that is not directly related to the Decentralized Token Folios protocol launched by Reserve. Its full name is "Believe In Something," corresponding to the DTF website's "Stop trading, believe in something."
Currently, the total market capitalization of DTF has reached $23.9 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of $20 million.
XRP
XRP has surged fivefold in a month, reclaiming the third position in the cryptocurrency market cap ranking, returning to the level before the SEC and Ripple lawsuit in 2020, making this long-standing token of the cross-border payments era one of the best-performing altcoins recently.
Related Reading: "XRP Reclaims Third Place in Crypto Market Cap, What Is Driving Its Soaring?"
Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange, and remittance network created by the American technology company Ripple Labs Inc. Ripple was released in 2012, based on a distributed open-source protocol that supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value. It claims to enable "secure, instant, and nearly free global financial transactions of any size, without any chargebacks."
Since Trump took office, there have been continuous cryptocurrency-related policies introduced, and XRP's launch path is closely related to the current SEC chairman's announcement of resignation. The SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple and its two executives, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen, in December 2020, accusing them of "conducting $1.3 billion in unregistered securities sales," and this lawsuit has not yet been concluded.
On December 1, former CFTC chairman Chris Giancarlo stated in an interview that the SEC should reconsider its approach, especially in light of recent legal outcomes and potential changes in the regulatory environment. When asked if the SEC would drop the Ripple lawsuit, Giancarlo said, "I think they should... I bet they will."
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