WHEN: Today, Monday, July 21, 2025

WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”

Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with SEC Chair Paul Atkins on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM – 9AM ET) today, Monday, July 21. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/07/21/sec-chair-paul-atkins-on-the-genius-act-private-equity-in-401ks-and-crypto-investing.html.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

ATKINS ON DIGITAL ASSETS

PAUL ATKINS: The one great thing about this is that for the first time now, the United States government has put its stamp of approval on a very key and important, potentially very important digital asset that will, I think, help to lower costs, lower risks in the market, because we can now move towards instantaneous, almost settlements of payment versus delivery for securities thanks to on chain stablecoins. And that will help, I think, innovation and to really get our markets, you know, to be the best in the world.

ATKINS ON 401K PRIVATE MARKETS

ATKINS: There’s a big demand from investors, individual investors to be allowed into those marketplaces. There are a few ways for them to do it now, but the SEC has made it difficult in the past. So what we want to do is work with the Department of Labor and obviously at the president’s direction, if, if and when an executive order comes for that. But regardless, we can work with the Department of Labor to help to have good guardrails for people to offer through various products that are registered for individual investors to put into their retirement plans for long term investment. We have to remember that these private funds are, we have issues regarding valuation, issues regarding liquidity, issues regarding fees and that sort of thing. So, we need to make it so that individual investors are relying on fiduciaries.

ATKINS ON ETH TREASURIES

ATKINS: Similar to Bitcoin, I mean the SEC has stated informally more than formally that Ether is not a security. And so but it’s obviously the ETH blockchain is a very key component for a lot of other digital currencies. So you know it’s up to companies to decide where they want to put their money and what sort of strategy they have. Obviously not for me to tell them, but I think it’s encouraging that these sorts of digital assets are being embraced by the marketplace. And I think that provides a good future for development.