IPOs, crypto and deregulation: The SEC prepares for a shift in 2026
Hot off the heels of his NYSE address, SEC chair lays out his vision for the Commission in 2026 and beyond
On December 2, 2025, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins rang the opening bell at the NYSE and delivered a keynote address titled Revitalizing America’s markets at 250. In a sweeping vision for the future of US capital markets, he argued the rules that over decades have piled up around public companies have made going public costlier and more burdensome – causing the number of listed firms to decline by roughly 40 percent since the mid-1990s.
Atkins painted the exchanges not merely as financial plumbing but as the locus of human ambition and national identity: markets should allocate capital ‘toward socially valued uses’ and reflect a…
