WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 22: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins during Atkins’ swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office at the White House on April 22, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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X spent the latter half of the week digesting SEC Chair Paul Atkins’s April 21 Economic Club of Washington keynote as a regime change.
“SEC Chair Paul Atkins unveiled ‘Project Crypto’, a formal token taxonomy co-developed with the CFTC that classifies when digital assets qualify as securities, with a forthcoming ‘innovation exemption’ for on-chain trading of tokenized securities,”
a user wrote on April 24, summarizing the speech. The post racked up engagement as commentators digested the chair’s commitment to a signed SEC-CFTC memorandum of understanding. Bitcoin was trading near $77,586 as of Saturday, April 25, recovering from a brutal selloff that bottomed close to $60,000 in February from late-2025 highs above $100,000. The question for traders heading into next week is whether the most aggressive pro-crypto pivot in SEC history is enough to push bitcoin back above the $80,000 line.
Crypto podcaster Scott Melker, who runs The Wolf Of All Streets, has been beating the regulatory drum since the announcement. “WATCH: SEC CHAIR ATKINS SAYS THE AGENCY HAS MOVED AWAY FROM THE ‘OLD PRACTICE OF REGULATION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT’ ON CRYPTO,” Melker posted on April 20, sharing the CNBC clip. Marc Baumann, founder of fiftyone.xyz, broke down what that actually means.
“The phrase that matters: ‘regulation through enforcement.’ The prior SEC tried to define digital asset rules by suing issuers and exchanges one at a time. Atkins is saying the SEC will write rules instead,”
Baumann wrote on April 21. The Solana ecosystem account @tokens confirmed the pivot the same day: “NEW: SEC Chairman Paul Atkins on CNBC says the agency has ‘pivoted from the old practice of regulation through enforcement’ on crypto.”
The bull thesis is that institutional capital, which sat on the sidelines through the Gensler era, finally has a green light. Crypto.news laid out the structural significance on April 23.
“Paul Atkins reveals the SEC is on the cusp of releasing an ‘innovation exemption’ to enable tokenized securities trading onchain and has initiated Project Crypto to modernize securities rules,”
the outlet wrote in a thread that drew 71 likes and 29 reposts. ChainGain, a crypto-macro analyst, put it more bluntly. “Paul Atkins announced an ‘innovation exemption’ + launched ‘Project Crypto’, full modernization of securities rules for onchain trading. The SEC is carving explicit legal space for onchain securities to exist,” ChainGain wrote on April 23. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor has been buying through the entire selloff. As of April 19, his firm holds 815,061 bitcoin acquired for roughly $61.56 billion at an average price of $75,527, according to his own X disclosures, building on the $1 billion preferred-stock pipeline he detailed earlier this month.
Melker himself has been the most vocal skeptic of the current bounce, flagging a historical pattern that has turned earlier rallies into bull traps.
“June 2022. Bitcoin bottomed at 17,600 and made a move to 25,200. Roughly a 43% gain. Then it went down to 15,500 in November. Has happened a few times,”
he warned on April 22, a direct caution that the current bounce off the $60,000 lows could mirror the 2022 pattern. His more pointed framing the same week: “Bitcoin Smashes $78K As Investors Go Risk On! Real Breakout Or Bull Trap?” The macro overhang is also unresolved. ETF inflows have been strong, with Melker citing a $1.9 billion seven-day inflow streak in a Yahoo Finance segment, but a regulatory headline alone has historically failed to overpower a broader risk-off tape.
“This is the most pro-crypto SEC stance in the history of the institution,” SHARKY, a Web3 analyst who tracks regulatory shifts, wrote on April 24. The chair first launched Project Crypto back in July 2025. What is new this week is the signed SEC-CFTC memorandum of understanding and the operational shape of the innovation exemption, which would let firms trade tokenized securities on-chain without bolting them onto legacy securities infrastructure. Crypto.news on April 23 framed the stakes plainly:
“Atkins reveals the SEC is on the cusp of releasing an ‘innovation exemption’ to enable tokenized securities trading onchain.”
Atkins is set to speak at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas on April 27-29, his first major bitcoin appearance as SEC chair. Saylor, who is also speaking, used his April 21 X post to mark Strategy’s first three weeks of April: “Strategy has generated 6.2% BTC Yield and ₿47,079 of BTC Gain in the first three weeks of April, worth approximately $3.6 billion. BTC Gain is the closest analog to Net Income on the Bitcoin Standard.” Two days out from the conference, he is unlikely to stop accumulating, and Atkins is unlikely to walk back the policy pivot in front of a Las Vegas crowd. Whether that combination is enough to break the $80,000 line is what traders find out next week.