SEC Chairman Paul Atkins says clarity is coming to the markets, but retail investors are not convinced. The Chairman blamed the previous administration for ‘closed door policies’ of not accepting new and ‘innovative products’.
The products the chairman is referring to is tokenized stock.
“And so we’ve changed that to provide clarity to the marketplace, to innovators and investors alike — starting out with a definition and a joint interpretive release with the CFTC to define what’s a tokenized security versus what are other sorts of tokenized assets,” said the SEC Chairman on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
On X, Paul Atkins shared his interview clip and highlighted the need for further clarity in the markets, stating:
““Under my leadership, the SEC is working to provide clarity to the marketplace so innovative technologies can be developed onshore. This represents more than a regulatory shift—it is a generational opportunity to advance American leadership in the digital finance revolution.”
But retail investors are fuming over the SEC Chairman’s lack of oversight particularly in the stock market where hedge fund rules were recently delayed until 2027.
On X, the issue surrounding the MMTLP Scandal continues to grow, with prominent voices such as Beard Vet and Lara Logan raising concerns over investors losing everything in FINRA’s 2022 U3 halt.
“Under your leadership, you refuse to meet with @nbhydrocarbons to resolve the issue of #MMTLP[.]
ONE BILLION COUNTERFEIT SHARES[.] Do your job[.],” says IRONAPE_MMTLP on X.
Trump’s SEC Hasn’t Changed From The Biden Administration’s
While the characters might be new, Trump’s SEC hasn’t changed from the Biden Administration’s.
Former SEC Chair Gary Gensler resigned on January 20, 2025. His resignation followed years of failures to keep Wall Street under control, delaying hedge fund transparency rules that would help detect and avoid massive systemic risks.
Retail investors, over Gensler’s tenure, were filled with false promises of an overhaul in the market after the 2021 events of GameStop and AMC.
Overleveraged financial institutions were out of control, flooding the market with synthetic shares (naked shorting) without oversight.
Under Gensler’s watch, leading hedge funds such as Ken Griffin’s Citadel got way with marking short sales as long for a period of five years.
The SEC was also aware of a fraud that was happening behind the scenes in MMTLP, according to FOIA transcripts with FINRA.
The list goes on and on — the question now is, what is Trump’s SEC doing in today’s market that prevents the average retail investor from getting screwed?
Because retail investors aren’t just getting screwed by overleveraged hedge funds, they’re getting screwed by their own regulators.
Trump Has The Power For An Ultimate Overhaul
President Donald Trump has the power for an ultimate SEC overhaul, so what’s the delay?
In August, retail investors formerly requested for the President to perform a full forensic audit on MMTLP under Executive Order 14147, which provides him with the power to oversee the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
While the SEC has historically operated as an independent agency, this specific order explicitly lists the SEC as a target for White House oversight, an effort to end the weaponization of the federal government.
Trump’s own DJT stock has suffered from market manipulation and illicit activity from bad actors on Wall Street.
Former Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes said in December 2024 that the company was monitoring naked short selling.
“We’ve notified the SEC, we’ve notified all the government agencies that would matter. We’ve worked closely with congress. Congress continues to I think probe and ask questions.
It’s kind of interesting, they’ve recently, in the recent months or so of the election, we haven’t seen too much weird stuff, so, the way that we knew that there was naked short selling, that’s the issue where shares don’t exist.
We knew that was happening because we turned up on this list where shares were not being delivered so we knew that there had to be the only logical reason for that is that there was naked short selling going on.
So, so far, knock on wood, we’ve been off that list now for a while, so we’re happy about that, but we continue to monitor it because we’re the only company in the country, really, that has virtually no institutional investors.”
Just a month prior to Nunes’s statement, President Donald Trump’s Truth social media platform scorched Citadel’s Ken Griffin for “naked short selling” and “screwing over everyday retail investors at the behest of other corporations”.
“Rather than support our common sense efforts to promote transparency and compliance, Citadel Securities bizarrely targeted our CEO with an unhinged attack. Here’s our response:
“Citadel Securities, a corporate behemoth that has been fined and censured for an incredibly wide range of offenses including issues related to naked short selling, and is world famous for screwing over everyday retail investors at the behest of other corporations, is the last company on earth that should lecture anyone on ‘integrity.’”
Paul Atkins Speaks on Market Integrity and Investor Protection
For years, retail investors, including great minds such as Elon Musk, have cried foul over the integrity of the market.
On January 28, 2021, Musk stated:
u can’t sell houses u don’t own u can’t sell cars u don’t own but u can sell stock u don’t own!? this is bs – shorting is a scam legal only for vestigial reasons
In a federal-court testimony in January 2023, he called short selling “evil” and said it “should be made illegal,” describing it as a way for “bad people on Wall Street to steal money from small investors.”
On December 3, 2019, reacting to Japan’s government pension fund stopping share lending for shorts: “Bravo, right thing to do! Short selling should be illegal.”
In October 2018 he called short sellers “value destroyers” and said the practice should be illegal.
He also wrote that stock lending for shorts “dilutes the shareholder base and gives the short a strong incentive to attack the company by whatever means possible.”
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins says temporary relief is coming.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.
“Though temporary, the Innovation Exemption is a principled, structured grant of relief designed to resolve genuine legal uncertainty, while providing investor protections and upholding market integrity standards.
Through this order and a number of ongoing initiatives, we will ensure that America remains the world’s premier destination to build the next generation of financial infrastructure,” the Chairman stated.
Will there be real change in the markets under new SEC Chairman Paul Atkins? Or has one puppet been swapped for another?
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Frank Nez is an American entrepreneur, journalist, writer, and investor. Frank's work has been cited by SEC and Congressional reports. Franknez.com is a personal finance and market news publication, dedicated to publishing content on money, investing, entrepreneurship, and retail investor news.
