With 75% support for Democrats to regain the majority in the US House of Representatives in 2026, Representative Maxine Waters’ new criticism of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins’ crypto policies could gain more energy.
While Congress is on its winter recess, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee on Monday called Atkins to testify before the committee, where they want him to answer for dismissing significant digital asset industry enforcement actions.
“The SEC has ended or stayed major enforcement actions against multiple crypto companies and individuals that were credibly accused of material violations of our securities laws, including Coinbase, Binance, and Justin Sun,” Waters wrote in a letter sent to Representative French Hill, the Republican chair of the panel. “The Committee has not examined the SEC’s rationale for dropping these cases, nor whether the agency intends to prevent fraud and manipulation in the markets that touch millions of retail investors.”
Waters argued that some of the companies released from SEC cases announced terminations before the Commission actually voted on them, and he argued that Atkins’ office “took an unusually active role in negotiating the termination of these cases.”Read more: Most Influential: Paul Atkins
The SEC did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Following the beginning of President Donald Trump’s administration, a leadership change at the agency – and the eventual confirmation of Atkins as its chair – led to the regulator abandoning a long list of legal battles it had waged with the crypto industry. Almost all of its pending cases were dropped, and it withdrew from several ongoing court disputes.
Trump has made it his mission to boost the US crypto industry, and Atkins has declared the same mission a top priority at the SEC, which was established as an independent federal regulator not intended to operate under the direct management of the White House.
Waters, who has at times been an active negotiator on crypto legislation as well as shared criticism of the industry, said Atkins “frames the agency’s agenda as a tool of the administration.” He also said that many of its policy changes have been implemented through staff statements rather than formal rules. This has regularly been the case for the crypto industry, which has enthusiastically adopted many of these statements to clarify the agency’s position in the absence of clear digital asset laws. “This approach violates the SEC’s legal obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act, excludes the important role provided by public comment in identifying issues, and hides from Congress and public view what interests are actually influencing SEC decision-making, so that we cannot assess the intentions of those parties molding SEC policy,” said Waters, who had requested that Atkins come to testify before the House panel.
Read more: US SEC chief warns watchdogs need to limit exploiting the power of crypto to spy