Atkins, Peirce and Uyeda outline crypto-friendly SEC agenda

SEC Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda released the first episode of the podcast Material Matters on Thursday to present the agency’s priorities for 2026 and to announce that the SEC’s crypto task force will be rebranded as Project Crypto. The episode came as the agency reported a 22% drop in enforcement actions in fiscal 2025 and a decline in monetary relief from $8.2 billion to $2.7 billion.

Atkins used the episode to press a pro-innovation message, saying the United States should be “a place where people want to innovate, whether it’s in crypto or something else” and calling the moment an “important inflection point in American markets.” Peirce, who will lead Project Crypto, argued that financial regulation should be open to new technology so markets can benefit. Uyeda criticized the previous SEC leadership for straying from its core responsibilities, calling recent policy a “complete deviation.”

The agency has published guidance asserting that “most crypto assets” are not securities, issued exemptions for some decentralized finance interfaces and dropped 7 crypto cases against firms including Ripple, Coinbase and Binance, citing misread of securities law. In its annual report the Commission said prior crypto enforcement had set “misguided expectations” and that resources “have been misapplied in prior years to pursue media headlines and run up numbers.”

Democratic lawmakers expressed concern about the reduction in enforcement. Representative Stephen Lynch told the House Financial Services Committee that dismissing prominent cases has harmed investor confidence. The SEC described the changes as a return to a more narrowly focused enforcement program.

Industry participants said the regulator’s statements matter for business planning. Zane, a regional manager at the exchange CoinEx, described early comments from Atkins as a shift to a “systemic and predictable rule architecture” that could encourage institutional capital, while noting further progress depends on congressional action. Sergey Kravtsov, chief executive of a stablecoin payments protocol, said he is relocating his company to the United States and filing a patent, but warned that if a formal regulatory framework takes another two years foundational infrastructure may be built overseas; he estimated a 12- to 18-month window for the U.S. to attract core payment infrastructure.

Officials on the podcast emphasized an innovation-friendly approach, and lawmakers and market participants have requested clearer statutory authority and predictable standards.