Paul Atkins could move one step closer to becoming the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s new crypto-friendly chair, with a Senate committee hearing reportedly in the works 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.

His wife’s 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

Solana (SOL) futures traded for the first time on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group’s US derivatives exchange on March 17 as the cryptocurrency’s mainstream adoption gains momentum.

In February, CME tipped plans to list two types of SOL futures contracts: standard contracts representing 500 SOL and retail-friendly “micro” contracts representing 25 SOL each. 

They are the first regulated Solana futures to hit the US market after Coinbase’s launched in February. The contracts are settled in cash, not physical SOL.

On March 17, the contracts’ first trading day, SOL futures representing a notional value of nearly 40,000 SOL, or nearly $5 million at current prices, changed hands on the exchange, according to preliminary data from CME’s website.

Early pricing data indicates a potentially bearish sentiment on SOL among traders. The CME does not publish finalized data on daily trading volumes until the subsequent business day. 

The CME’s April futures contracts traded at a price of $127 per SOL — $2 per token less than contracts expiring in March, CME data shows. 

On March 16, trading firms FalconX and StoneX completed the first-ever SOL futures trade on CME, they said.

“Solana has come a long way in the last five years,” Chris Chung, founder of Solana-based swap platform Titan, told Cointelegraph on March 17.

“Solana futures are going live on the CME today, and SOL [exchange-traded funds] will surely follow shortly behind,” Chung said. 

CME listed SOL futures on March 17. Source: CME

Related: Solana CME futures tip impending US ETF approvals — Exec

ETF approval odds

On March 13, Chung told Cointelegraph he expects the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve asset managers VanEck and Canary Capital’s proposed spot Solana ETFs as soon as May.

At least five ETF issuers have filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to list spot Solana ETFs. The regulator has until October 2025 to make a final decision on the filings. 

Bloomberg Intelligence gauges the likelihood that SOL ETFs are ultimately approved at approximately 70%.

Futures contracts are standardized agreements to buy or sell an underlying asset at a future date. 

They are commonly used for hedging and speculation by retail and institutional investors. Futures also play a crucial supporting role for spot cryptocurrency ETFs because regulated futures markets provide a stable benchmark for measuring a digital asset’s performance.

CME already lists futures contracts for Bitcoin BTC and Ether ETH. US regulators approved ETFs for both of those cryptocurrencies last year.

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Stablecoin developer Ethena Labs and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization company Securitize are launching a new blockchain for retail and institutional investors seeking access to the DeFi and tokenization economies. 

According to a March 17 announcement, the forthcoming Converge blockchain is an Ethereum Virtual Machine that will provide retail investors with access to “standard DeFi applications.” It will also specialize in institutional-grade offerings that will help bridge traditional finance with DeFi opportunities. 

The Converge blockchain is announced at the Tokenize NYC conference on March 17. Source: Cointelegraph

Converge will launch with various product offerings, including Ethereal, Morpho, Maple Labs, Pendle and Aave Labs’ Horizon. 

Converge’s RWA infrastructure will benefit from Securitize’s growing presence in the tokenization market, with nearly $2 billion minted across various blockchains. The company recently announced that BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) has surpassed $1 billion in net assets one year after launch. 

The Converge blockchain will receive custodial support from Anchorage and Copper as well as custodial support from Securitize’s latest partner, RedStone.

On the DeFi side, Converge will allow users to stake Ethena’s native governance token, ENA. Ethena’s USDe (USDE) and USDtb stablecoins will serve as the network’s gas tokens.  

Related: BlackRock CEO wants SEC to ‘rapidly approve’ tokenization of bonds, stocks: What it means for crypto

Institutional DeFi on the rise

Institutional DeFi — when traditional financial institutions adopt regulatory-compliant DeFi systems — appears to be gaining traction as companies look to optimize their operations and access new yield opportunities. 

Even JPMorgan, once a blockchain and Bitcoin (BTC) skeptic, said institutional DeFi “has the potential for growth and transformative impact.”

RWAs are accelerating this trend, with the likes of McKinsey forecasting a $2 trillion tokenization market by 2030.

As Neoclassic Capital co-founder Michael Bucella noted in an interview with Cointelegraph, RWAs are attracting big investors because they address “pricing inefficiencies” in both traditional and digital assets. 

“To TradFi, that is mispriced credit facilities (i.e., cost of capital) or exposure to underpriced volume. To crypto-native, that is low-volume, secure assets,” said Bucella.

Including stablecoins, which are onchain representations of fiat currencies, the total RWA market has exceeded $240 billion, according to industry data. 

Excluding stablecoins, the total value of RWAs onchain is fast approaching $20 billion across more than 90,500 holders, according to RWA.xyz. 

The new issuance volume of RWA shows a significant growth in stablecoins, US Treasury and private credit debt. Source: RWA.xyz

Related: Bitwise makes first institutional DeFi allocation