On March 28, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman nominee Paul Atkins said he was "concerned" about public reports involving parents of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and Stanford University profiting from the crypto trading platform, according to unchained. He responded at a confirmation hearing on the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana, used his five-minute questioning time at the hearing to ask Atkins about the SEC’s knowledge of the former crypto tycoon’s parents and their relationship with the crypto collapse.

Atkins said he was not clear about what the SEC did to investigate these relationships except for what was publicly reported, as he was not working on the committee during the FTX crisis at the end of 2022. However, he agreed to review the work of the SEC investigating Bankman-Fried’s parents and their relationship with Stanford Law School at the request of Kennedy.