Canary Capital has filed its sixth proposed crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) with US regulators, this time for one tracking the spot price of the crypto token Sui.

In a March 17 Form S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the crypto investment firm requested to list the Canary SUI ETF, which didn’t include information on what exchange it would trade on or the proposed ticker symbol.

The ETF would directly hold Sui (SUI), the native token of the layer-1 blockchain used for fees and staking, which is the 23rd largest cryptocurrency with a market value of around $7.36 billion, per CoinGekco.

Sui is trading up 1.3% over the last day to $2.31 and has gained 7.3% over the week. It has, however, fallen 56.5% from its Jan. 5 all-time peak of $5.35.

Sui’s price over the last 24 hours hit a high of $2.38 but has since slightly fallen. Source: CoinGekco

Canary had registered a trust in Delaware on March 6 for the fund, and it must also file a Form 19b-4 with the SEC before the agency can consider whether to list it for trading.

Canary’s Sui filing is its sixth crypto ETF bid with the SEC. In the past few months, it filed for ETFs tracking Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC), XRP (XRP), Hedera (HBAR) and Axelar (AXL).

The filing comes after Sui said on March 6 that it partnered with World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform backed by US President Donald Trump.

Part of the partnership saw World Liberty include the Sui token in its so-called “Macro Strategy” token reserve and explore further product opportunities together.

Related: Hashdex amends S-1 for crypto index ETF, adds seven altcoins

Trump has promised to relax regulatory enforcement against crypto, which has sparked a flurry of crypto ETF filings amid optimism that the SEC under his administration will move to greenlight them.

The SEC has delayed making decisions on multiple crypto ETF filings, but Commissioner Hester Peirce said last month that the agency would wait until the Senate confirms Trump’s pick to chair the SEC, Paul Atkins, before deciding on an agenda for crypto.

A Senate confirmation hearing for Atkins is reportedly slated for March 27, having been delayed due to issues with financial disclosures.

Magazine: Crypto fans are obsessed with longevity and biohacking — Here’s why 

Update March 18, 6:42am: This article has been updated to reflect that Cointelegraph reached out to KIP Protocol and Meteora.

The Libra token scandal is set to be reviewed by the Supreme Court of New York after a newly filed class-action lawsuit accused its creators of misleading investors and siphoning over $100 million from one-sided liquidity pools.

Burwick Law filed the suit on behalf of its clients against Kelsier Ventures, KIP Protocol and Meteora on March 17 for launching the Libra (LIBRA) token in a “deceptive, manipulative and fundamentally unfair” manner. The token was then promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei on X as an economic initiative to stimulate private-sector funding in the country.

The law firm slammed the two crypto infrastructure and launchpad firms behind LIBRA — KIP and Meteora — claiming that they used a “predatory” one-sided liquidity pool to artificially inflate the memecoin’s price, allowing insiders to profit while “everyday buyers bore the losses.”

Within hours, the insiders “rapidly siphoned approximately $107 million from the liquidity pools,” causing a 94% crash in LIBRA’s market value, Burwick Law said in a March 17 filing shared on X.

Source: Burwick Law

President Milei was mentioned in the lawsuit but wasn’t named a defendant.

Burwick accused the defendants of leveraging Milei’s influence to aggressively promote the token, deliberately creating a false sense of legitimacy and misleading investors about its economic potential.

Approximately 85% of LIBRA’s tokens were withheld at launch and the “predatory infrastructure techniques” allegedly used by the defendants weren’t disclosed to investors, Burwick said.

“These tactics, combined with omissions about the true liquidity structures, deprived investors of material information.”

Burwick is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, the disgorgement of “unjustly obtained” profits and injunctive relief to prevent further fraudulent token offerings.Cointelegraph reached out to KIP Protocol and Meteora but didn’t receive an immediate response.

Related: Law firm demands Pump.fun remove over 200 memecoins using its IP

Data from blockchain research firm Nansen found that of the 15,430 largest Libra wallets it examined, over 86% of those sold at a loss, combining for $251 million in losses.

Only 2,101 profitable wallets were able to take home a combined $180 million in profit, Nansen noted in a Feb. 19 report.

The venture capital firm behind the LIBRA token, Kelsier Ventures, and its CEO, Hayden Davis, were apparently two of the biggest winners from the token launch. They claim to have netted around $100 million.

Davis, who is now facing a potential Interpol red notice following an Argentine lawyer’s request, said on Feb. 17 that he didn’t directly own the tokens and wouldn’t sell them.

Meanwhile, Milei has distanced himself from the memecoin, arguing he didn’t “promote” the LIBRA token — as fraud lawsuits filed against him have alleged — and instead merely “spread the word” about it.

Argentina’s opposition party called for Milei’s impeachment but has had limited success thus far.

Magazine: Meet lawyer Max Burwick — ‘The ambulance chaser of crypto’

US government cost-cutting czar Elon Musk claims to have found at least 14 “magic money computers” in the federal government with the ability to send money from nothing.

Musk said the computers, which exist in several federal departments, including the Treasury, Defense and Health and Human Services departments, can essentially issue payments and send money from nothing.

“You may think that the government computers all talk to each other, they’re synchronized, they add up what funds are going where, and it’s coherent and that the numbers you’re presented as a senator are the real numbers,” Musk said in a March 17 episode of Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz.

An absolute bombshell from @elonmusk on the latest episode of Verdict.He reveals there are 14 magic money computers in the federal government that send money out of nothing.Don’t miss the latest episode of Verdict wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now!… pic.twitter.com/1tnJmJtiw9

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 17, 2025

However, Musk said this isn’t the case. 

“They’re not totally wrong, but they’re probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases. So I call it ‘magic money computer’ — any computer that can make money out of thin air. That’s magic money.”

Jameson Lopp, the chief security officer at Bitcoin (BTC) custody company Casa, said in the video comments that “Bitcoin fixes this.” 

Bitcoin advocates have long touted the cryptocurrency’s ability to hedge against currency devaluation, as Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million coins, while fiat supply can increase with more “printing.” 

Source: Jameson Lopp

Related: DOGE proposes slashing Internal Revenue Service staff by 20%

Musk says his latest DOGE efforts have also uncovered that US government departments have more media, software subscriptions, and credit cards than they do people working there — in some cases, up to double. 

However, he thinks 80% of cases are waste and incompetence rather than a malicious scheme because, in some instances, companies are being sent money by mistake. Then nobody from the government is asking for the money back. 

“We saw a lot of payments going out of Treasury that had no payment code and no explanation for the payment, and then we’re trying to figure out what that payment is,” Musk said. 

“Then we see that, okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off, but someone forgot to shut off that contract, and so the company kept getting money. Now, is that waste or fraud?”

Musk’s other business ventures have suffered due to his DOGE work. Tesla facilities around the US have been vandalized as part of a broader “Take down Tesla” movement protesting DOGE’s cost-cutting measures. 

Magazine: Elon Musk’s plan to run government on blockchain faces uphill battle

The team behind blockchain network Solana has deleted a controversial advertisement posted on its X account after immense backlash over political messaging around gender identity.

The more than two-and-a-half-minute ad for the Solana Accelerate conference posted on March 17 with the caption “America is back. Time to Accelerate” depicted a man as “America” in a therapy session who said he was having thoughts “about innovation” such as crypto.

The therapist responds he should do “something more productive, like coming up with a new gender” and later says the man should “focus on pronouns.”

As the conversation meanders on, the man snaps and launches into a monologue amid swelling patriotic music, saying he wants to “build onchain and reclaim my place as the beacon of innovation” and wants “to invent technologies, not genders” in an apparent dig at progressive values.

Before its deletion, the ad was viewed over 1.2 million times and racked up over 1,300 comments and 1,400 reposts, a majority of which derided it for its handling of gender identity and for making light of a highly divisive political issue.

“They rolled it back because it hurt their business, not because they thought it was wrong,” Cinneamhain Ventures partner Adam Cochran wrote to X on March 18.

Took them 9 hours to delete it.Also all the major players in the Solana ecosystem suddenly delete their tweets promoting/supporting the ad and RT’d and liked takes about it being bad.They approved this, supported it and celebrated it.They rolled it back because it hurt… pic.twitter.com/kPMERDpTcn

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) March 18, 2025

Solana has not stated why it deleted the ad. The Solana Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sean O’Connor, operating chief at Web3 infrastructure firm Blocknative, wrote on X, “This is so fucking tone deaf.”

“At a time when trans people are getting denied passports and being erased by the government… this is the ad you put out?” he added. 

On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump revoked Joe Biden’s executive orders aimed at preventing discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. 

He also signed an order recognizing only two sexes — male and female — and scrapped the option for Americans to choose “X” as a gender on passports.

DoubleZero operating chief David McIntyre called Solana’s ad “horrendous” and questioned why Solana didn’t “keep the message positive instead of dunking on people and making light of serious cultural issues.”

Nicolas Pennie, the co-founder of the Solana development platform Helius, said on X that “virtue signaling will always be cringe regardless of political ideology.”

Others who initially backed the ad have also pulled their support amid the backlash.

Related: Crypto firms spent $134M on 2024 US elections, raising influence concerns

Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain wrote on X that he deleted his initial post praising the ad “after some reflection.” 

He previously called the ad “bold and risky” and said having former Vice President Kamala Harris play the role of therapist was the “only thing that could have made it better.”

In his retraction statement, Jain said it would have been more effective to “focus on deeper culture war issues like the failings of the oppressor-oppressed world view, not surface culture war issues like pronouns,” and the ad could have sent a message “without alienating a portion of the audience.”

X Hall of Flame: Solana ‘will be a trillion-dollar asset’ — Mert Mumtaz 

Bitcoin’s nearly $12 billion open interest shakeout earlier this month might be just the catalyst needed for the asset to regain its upward momentum, according to a crypto analyst.

“This can be considered as a natural market reset, an essential phase for sustaining a bullish continuation,” CryptoQuant contributor DarkFost said in a March 17 markets report.

“Looking at historical trends, each past deleveraging like this has provided good opportunities for the short to medium term,” the analyst said.

CoinGlass data shows that on Feb. 20, Bitcoin’s (BTC) open interest (OI) — a metric tracking the total number of unsettled Bitcoin derivative contracts such as options and futures — stood at $61.42 billion before dropping 19% to $49.71 billion by March 4. 

Bitcoin’s open interest is sitting at $49.02 billion at the time of publication. Source: CoinGlass

It came amid volatile price swings due to uncertainty over US President Donald Trump’s imposed tariffs and the future of US interest rates.

“Following the recent panic triggered by political instability linked to Trump’s decisions, we witnessed a massive liquidation of leveraged positions on Bitcoin,” DarkFost said.

Bitcoin’s price fell below two crucial price levels during the two-week period, bringing it closer to the levels seen in the days after Trump’s election win in November.

Feb. 25 saw Bitcoin’s price retrace below $90,000, and just two days later, on Feb. 27, Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 for the first time since November. It’s now trading at $83,400, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Bitcoin is down 14.58% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap

Bitget chief analyst Ryan Lee recently told Cointelegraph that with Bitcoin hovering in the low $80,000s, its price and OI could see more volatility if the March 19 Federal Open Market Committee meeting delivers any surprises.

“The market largely expects the Fed to hold rates steady, but any unexpected hawkish signals could put pressure on Bitcoin and other risk assets,” he added. 

Related: Bitcoin experiencing ‘shakeout,’ not end of 4-year cycle: Analysts

Markets are currently pricing in a 99% chance that the Fed will keep interest rates steady, according to the latest estimates of the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

At the time of publication, Bitcoin OI is sitting at $49.02 billion, representing an approximate 6.5% increase over the past five days.

Magazine: Crypto fans are obsessed with longevity and biohacking: Here’s why

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Offchain Labs, the developers of Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum, have announced a partnership with the Arbitrum Foundation to launch a new incubator-style program called Onchain Labs.

According to a March 17 post by Offchain Labs, the new incubator is aimed at rapidly adding to Arbitrum’s existing decentralized application (DApp) offerings with a particular focus on supporting “innovative and experimental” projects. 

Offchain Labs said this support will primarily come in the form of product and go-to-market advice and won’t provide engineering or other operational resources. 

It also added that while it’s possible — there’s no guarantee that its venture capital arm, Tandem, will purchase any of these project tokens in public markets. 

Source: Offchain Labs

Offchain Labs said the continued development of Arbitrum over the past few years has seen it grow to become one of the “most performant ecosystems in the space.” But now, with the launch of Onchain Labs, the focus will shift to building out the network’s application landscape.

“Through Onchain Labs, we’re dedicating resources to support developers looking to rapidly expand the application layer by ideating with them from the ground floor to bring the best user experiences to Arbitrum,” the company said. 

“With Offchain Labs’ support, we’re confident we’ll see industry-leading applications that are uniquely possible on Arbitrum.”

However, it’s not just about building more applications.

The firm has also said it will only support projects that launch fairly. Offchain Labs claimed the industry’s recent trend toward extractive zero-sum launches “stands in stark contrast to the core ethos of crypto,” adding that “as an industry, we can — and must — do better.”

It will seek to counter this trend by only working with teams that commit to equitable launches, which it said was “essential for fostering community alignment. There’s no reason why all participants in an ecosystem can’t succeed together.”

The rise of layer 2s is creating problems for Ethereum

Arbitrum was one of the earliest layer 2s (L2s) on Ethereum, but there’s been an explosion in new L2 networks since Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade last year.

According to L2Beat, there are now over 70 layer 2s and many more on the way. This has created some issues for Ethereum, according to some industry professionals. 

The first is the fracturing of the Ethereum ecosystem, as different DApps run on different layer 2s, which may or may not be interoperable.

“We currently have too many, the more L2s we build, the less interoperability we will have, creating other problems around infrastructure,” Vitali Dervoed, the co-founder and CEO of perpetual exchange Composability Labs, told Cointelegraph in August. 

Related: DigiFT launches Invesco private credit token on Arbitrum

“Developers might have good intentions when building the next super-fast, low-gas-fee, easy-to-use blockchain, but in the long run, it’s counterproductive as it creates a more fragmented ecosystem,” he added. 

Another issue is that lower-cost layer 2s like Base and Arbitrum are eating into Ethereum’s revenue and impacting the layer 1’s market cap. 

It comes on the same day Standard Chartered downgraded its 2025 price target for Ethereum by a whopping 60%, from US$10,000 to just US$4,000, with the bank’s head of digital asset research, Geoff Kendrick, saying, “We expect ETH to continue its structural decline.” 

Kendrick cited the impact of low-cost layer 2s like Base and Arbitrum as one of the key drivers of this decline. 

“Layer 2 blockchains were meant to improve ETH scalability, but we estimate that Base (a key layer 2) has removed USD 50bn from ETH’s market cap.”

Magazine: ETH may bottom at $1.6K, SEC delays multiple crypto ETFs, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 9 – 15

The US Securities and Exchange Commission could change or scrap a rule proposed under the Biden administration that would tighten crypto custody standards for investment advisers, according to the agency’s acting chair, Mark Uyeda.

In prepared remarks to an investment industry conference in San Diego on March 17, Uyeda said the rule proposed in February 2023 had seen commenters express “significant concern” over its “broad scope.”

“Given such concern, there may be significant challenges to proceeding with the original proposal. As such, I have asked the SEC staff to work closely with the crypto task force to consider appropriate alternatives, including its withdrawal,” Uyeda said.

The rule was floated under the Biden administration during Gary Gensler’s tenure leading the regulator. It aimed to expand custody rules for investment advisers to any and all assets held for a client, including crypto, and upped the requirements to protect them.

Source: SEC

This meant that investment advisers would have to custody their clients’ crypto with a qualified custodian. Gensler said at the time that investment advisers “cannot rely on” crypto platforms as qualified custodians due to how they operate.

The proposal caused friction with Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce, along with industry advocacy bodies who claimed the rule was unlawful and dangerous.

“How could an adviser seeking to comply with this rule possibly invest client funds in crypto assets after reading this release?” Uyeda remarked at the time. He did, however, support the proposal despite disagreeing “with a number of provisions.” 

Peirce, who was the sole commissioner of the five to vote against the rule, said at the time that the proposed rule “would expand the reach of the custody requirements to crypto assets while likely shrinking the ranks of qualified crypto custodians.”

Related: Congress repealed the IRS broker rule, but can it regulate DeFi? 

Uyeda’s latest remarks come days after he said on March 10 that he had asked SEC staff “for options on abandoning” part of a proposal pushing for some crypto firms to register with the regulator as exchanges.

The Trump-era SEC has also killed a rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets, called SAB 121.

In December, President Donald Trump picked former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to take over from Uyeda to chair the agency. This is now a step closer, with a Senate hearing reportedly slated for March 27.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered 

Crypto whale tracking on the Hyperliquid blockchain has enabled traders to target whales with prominent leveraged positions in a “democratized” attempt to liquidate them, according to the head of 10x Research.

Hyperliquid, a blockchain network specializing in trading, allows traders to publicly observe what type of positions a whale is holding, and since these positions are leveraged, the market can assess the liquidation levels unless an additional margin is added, Markus Thielen said in a March 17 report.

Source: 10x Research

“This transparency opens the door for coordinated efforts, where groups of traders could intentionally target these stop levels to trigger liquidations,” he said. 

It’s a common belief in the crypto market that whales with substantial holdings can influence the market through their trading tactics, such as stop-loss hunting, to deliberately trigger other traders’ stop-loss orders and liquidate their positions. 

Thielen says the recent actions from traders show this balance of power could be shifting.

“In effect, stop-hunting is being ‘democratized,’ with ad-hoc groups now playing a role once reserved mainly for market-making desks, or treasury teams, at exchanges before tighter regulatory scrutiny,” Thielen added. 

Thielen told Cointelegraph that it’s still “unclear if this type of activity will become widespread onchain, but as always, transparency can cut both ways.” 

Why are traders trying to liquidate whales?

This isn’t the first time smaller traders have attempted to take down larger entities through coordinated trading tactics. 

Thielen says crypto traders trying to liquidate whales have echoes of the GameStop short squeeze, which saw small traders flip the table on Wall Street short-sellers by buying GameStop’s stock, sending it to all-time highs of over $81 to liquid their positions. 

“This reminds me of the dynamics we saw during the GameStop saga in 2020/2021, where aggressive short squeezes drove rapid price spikes,” he said. 

Related: Bybit CEO on ‘brutal’ $4M Hyperliquid loss: Lower leverage as positions grow

“When stop levels get triggered, prices often accelerate in that direction, providing liquidity for others to cover. We’ve seen similar tactics from market makers and exchanges in the crypto space over the years.” 

Hunt is still on for 40x leveraged Bitcoin short-seller

On March 16, a crypto whale known for placing large, highly leveraged positions on Hyperliquid opened a 40x leveraged short position at $84,043 for over 4,442 Bitcoin (BTC), worth over $368 million on March 16, facing liquidation if Bitcoin’s price surpassed $85,592.

The move didn’t go unnoticed, and pseudonymous trader CBB sent out the call on X to gather a team of traders with enough funds to liquidate the whale’s position. 

Source: CBB

Thielen said in the 10x report that on March 16, Bitcoin surged by 2.5% within minutes, partly because of a coordinated effort to liquidate a whale’s short position on Bitcoin perpetual via Hyperliquid.

The whale has since increased their position to $524 million, and at one point, the whale hunters nearly got their wish when the price of Bitcoin hit $84,583.84, according to CoinGecko. 

Source: CRG

However, some speculate the exposed short position could be intentional. 

Hedge fund trader Josh Man said in a March 17 post to X that the whale might be purposefully trying to get liquidated. 

“So this there is a fairly rare and not widely used technique of self-liquidation and this FEELS a little like that,” he said. 

“In such events, the seller is actually creating a bomb designed to go off and create a rally from the liquidation of his own short. One would expect that he has a large offsetting long versus short.” 

Source: Josh Man

Magazine: Crypto fans are obsessed with longevity and biohacking: Here’s why

Crypto whale tracking on the Hyperliquid blockchain has enabled traders to target whales with prominent leveraged positions in a “democratized” attempt to liquidate them, according to the head of 10x Research.

Hyperliquid, a blockchain network specializing in trading, allows traders to publicly observe what type of positions a whale is holding, and since these positions are leveraged, the market can assess the liquidation levels unless an additional margin is added, Markus Thielen said in a March 17 report.

Source: 10x Research

“This transparency opens the door for coordinated efforts, where groups of traders could intentionally target these stop levels to trigger liquidations,” he said. 

It’s a common belief in the crypto market that whales with substantial holdings can influence the market through their trading tactics, such as stop-loss hunting, to deliberately trigger other traders’ stop-loss orders and liquidate their positions. 

Thielen says the recent actions from traders show this balance of power could be shifting.

“In effect, stop-hunting is being ‘democratized,’ with ad-hoc groups now playing a role once reserved mainly for market-making desks, or treasury teams, at exchanges before tighter regulatory scrutiny,” Thielen added. 

Thielen told Cointelegraph that it’s still “unclear if this type of activity will become widespread onchain, but as always, transparency can cut both ways.” 

Why are traders trying to liquidate whales?

This isn’t the first time smaller traders have attempted to take down larger entities through coordinated trading tactics. 

Thielen says crypto traders trying to liquidate whales have echoes of the GameStop short squeeze, which saw small traders flip the table on Wall Street short-sellers by buying GameStop’s stock, sending it to all-time highs of over $81 to liquid their positions. 

“This reminds me of the dynamics we saw during the GameStop saga in 2020/2021, where aggressive short squeezes drove rapid price spikes,” he said. 

Related: Bybit CEO on ‘brutal’ $4M Hyperliquid loss: Lower leverage as positions grow

“When stop levels get triggered, prices often accelerate in that direction, providing liquidity for others to cover. We’ve seen similar tactics from market makers and exchanges in the crypto space over the years.” 

Hunt is still on for 40x leveraged Bitcoin short-seller

On March 16, a crypto whale known for placing large, highly leveraged positions on Hyperliquid opened a 40x leveraged short position at $84,043 for over 4,442 Bitcoin (BTC), worth over $368 million on March 16, facing liquidation if Bitcoin’s price surpassed $85,592.

The move didn’t go unnoticed, and pseudonymous trader CBB sent out the call on X to gather a team of traders with enough funds to liquidate the whale’s position. 

Source: CBB

Thielen said in the 10x report that on March 16, Bitcoin surged by 2.5% within minutes, partly because of a coordinated effort to liquidate a whale’s short position on Bitcoin perpetual via Hyperliquid.

The whale has since increased their position to $524 million, and at one point, the whale hunters nearly got their wish when the price of Bitcoin hit $84,583.84, according to CoinGecko. 

Source: CRG

However, some speculate the exposed short position could be intentional. 

Hedge fund trader Josh Man said in a March 17 post to X that the whale might be purposefully trying to get liquidated. 

“So this there is a fairly rare and not widely used technique of self-liquidation and this FEELS a little like that,” he said. 

“In such events, the seller is actually creating a bomb designed to go off and create a rally from the liquidation of his own short. One would expect that he has a large offsetting long versus short.” 

Source: Josh Man

Magazine: Crypto fans are obsessed with longevity and biohacking: Here’s why

Paul Atkins may be one step closer to becoming the new crypto-friendly chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with a Senate committee hearing reportedly set for March 27.

President Donald Trump nominated Atkins to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, but his marriage into a billionaire family has reportedly caused headaches with financial disclosures — delaying his potential start date.

While it isn’t clear whether the White House has produced those papers to the Senate, Senate Banking, House and Urban Affairs Chair Tim Scott is reportedly eyeing a March 27 hearing to review Atkins’ standing, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller said in a March 17 X post.

“No clarity yet on whether the committee has Atkins’ paperwork in hand, but either way, this is the most momentum we’ve seen so far.”

Atkins would, however, need to be voted in by the Senate at a later date. Mueller also said the Senate banking committee is also planning to hold a bipartisan meeting on Atkins’ nomination on March 21.

Source: Eleanor Mueller

It follows an earlier March 3 Semafor report, where Mueller said financial disclosures had held Atkins back from scheduling a Senate hearing to review his standing.

He married Sarah Humphreys Atkins in 1990 — whose family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC — a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that reportedly turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes said on Dec. 14, 2024.

“It’s a lot to go through,” one former Senate Banking Committee staffer reportedly told Mueller on March 3.

“But he got named so early on, so I think that’s why people are starting to be like, ‘What the hell’s taking so long?’” 

Atkins previously served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008 and worked as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York before that. He is expected to regulate the crypto arena with a more collaborative approach than former SEC Chair Gary Gensler.It’s been almost four months since Atkins was chosen by Trump to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, and over two months since Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20.

A late start for an SEC chair wouldn’t be too unusual, however.

The two most recent SEC chairs, Gary Gensler and Jay Clayton, started on April 17, 2021, and May 4, 2017 — months after presidential transitions occurred in those years.

Related: SEC’s enforcement case against Ripple may be wrapping up

Meanwhile, Mark Uyeda has been serving as the SEC’s acting chair since Gensler left on Jan. 20.

Since then, the Uyeda-led SEC has established a Crypto Task Force led by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and canceled a controversial rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets.

The SEC has dropped several investigations and lawsuits that the Gensler-led commission filed against the likes of Coinbase, Consensys, Robinhood, Gemini, Uniswap and OpenSea over the last month.The SEC is also looking to abandon a rule requiring crypto firms to register as exchanges and may even axe the Biden administration’s proposed crypto custody rules, Uyeda said on March 17.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered