All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

Rewriting the Rules: The SEC & CFTC on Crypto, IPOs & the Future of American Markets

March 11, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Rewriting the Rules: The SEC & CFTC on Crypto, IPOs & the Future of American Markets

The number of public companies in the United States has fallen by half over the past three decades, even as private capital markets have exploded. SEC Chair Paul Atkins, who started his career as a young lawyer doing corporate finance work in the mid-1980s, remembers when companies like Apple and Microsoft went public as young, four- or five-year-old businesses with around 1,000 employees and roughly $120 million in revenue. Back then, an IPO was a fundraising moment — essentially a Series C or D round. Today, it has become a liquidity event for insiders, with companies staying private until they are mature, and the returns that once went to public investors now flow overwhelmingly to venture capital, private equity, and corporate insiders.

Why Companies Stay Private — and What the SEC Wants to Change

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What you'll learn

1 (00:44) **Evolution of US capital markets** - Atkins describes shift from young companies IPOing for fundraising in the 80s to today's private markets dominance
2 (03:28) **IPOs as liquidity events** - Discussion of why companies stay private longer and what inhibits going public
3 (05:12) **Proposed reforms to revive IPOs** - Atkins outlines three key inhibitions and plans to address them
4 (06:30) **CFTC 2026 priorities** - Seelig covers crypto legislation, spot market authority, and modernizing rules for blockchain and AI
5 (08:17) **Tokenization and systemic risk** - Conversation on 24/7 markets, autonomous trading agents, and need for guardrails
6 (13:09) **Leverage in crypto and prediction markets** - Framework for setting appropriate leverage limits and historical lessons from past crises
7 (15:33) **SEC-CFTC coordination failures** - Historical turf battles and product deaths in no-man's land between agencies