Trump’s SEC Chair Atkins touts deregulation progress in first year review

SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins, marking his first year, emphasized deregulatory moves intended to ease compliance costs and spur capital formation. Key proposals include raising Form PF filing thresholds from $150 million to $1 billion and lifting the “large” hedge fund cutoff from $1.5 billion to $10 billion, reducing mandatory reporting for many advisers. The SEC unveiled a five-part digital-asset framework that treats Digital Commodities, Collectibles, Tools and Stablecoins as non-securities while reserving SEC jurisdiction for Digital Securities. The agency also proposed a 12–36 month “innovation exemption” to allow tokenized equities and bonds to trade on-chain while firms work toward full compliance, and signed an MOU with the CFTC to harmonize definitions. Collectively, these moves could lower compliance burdens, accelerate tokenization and IPO activity, and be broadly positive for crypto markets and capital-raising, while keeping oversight for true digital securities.