SEC Chairman Paul Atkins wants to make public companies cool again, and tokenization is part of the plan

The number of companies listed on US exchanges has dropped from roughly 7,800 to about 4,700 over the past 28 years. America’s public markets have been slowly shrinking for nearly three decades, and the SEC’s new chairman thinks he knows how to fix it.

Paul Atkins, who officially took the reins at the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2025, is pushing an agenda that sounds like it was cooked up at the intersection of Wall Street and Web3. The goal: make it easier to be a public company, get more Americans investing in public markets, and, quietly, let blockchain technology do some of the heavy lifting.

Make IPOs great again

Atkins’ flagship initiative is literally called “Make IPOs Great Again,” and it rests on three pillars. First, modernizing and streamlining disclosure requirements. The idea here is that compliance costs have become so bloated that smaller companies simply can’t justify going public. Second, reforming reporting frameworks. Third, exploring alternative litigation processes while keeping shareholder protections intact.

Where crypto enters the picture