President Trump creates crypto task force, wants digital stockpile
President Donald Trump‘s executive order on cryptocurrency seeks to jumpstart government regulation that can help make the U.S. “crypto capital of the planet.”
Trump – who campaigned as the “crypto president” – passed the order on Thursday night. It calls for the creation of a cryptocurrency working group to propose new digital asset regulations and to look into the creation of a national cryptocurrency stockpile.
As a result, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will likely become more mainstream and possibly used for payment just like credit and debit cards.
“This means that cryptocurrency and digital assets are being given legitimacy by our federal government,” Amy Lynch, a former regulator with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and founder and president of financial consulting firm FrontLine Compliance, told USA TODAY. “Once regulation is in place and the new executive orders are carried out (if not changed substantially by the Working Group) then cryptocurrency transactions in the USA will multiply exponentially.”
Regulation will provide “a massive relief for everyday crypto users,” Yesha Yadav, a professor specializing in financial regulation at Vanderbilt Law School, told USA TODAY. “What this promises is something that has really been missing, which is a workable, reliable, thoughtful set of guardrails they can provide some basic protections to those who are in the crypto market.”
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
Can Trump lower interest rates?:Trump says he’ll demand lower rates immediately, claims he knows rates better than Fed
What else is in the President Trump’s executive order on cryptocurrency
The order establishes a Digital Asset Markets working group. They include: the Treasury secretary (nominee Scott Bessent is awaiting a full chamber vote on his nomination), White House A.I. and Crypto Czar David Sacks, and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (Trump has nominated former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins), along with “heads of other relevant departments and agencies.”
The group is charged with developing a regulatory framework for digital assets, according to the order. That includes stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the U.S. dollar.
For those who have invested in cryptocurrencies, the “lack of basic protection” can be “very, very costly,” Yadav told USA TODAY. “What has been missing … for those who are using things like stablecoins (is) knowing with certainty that the assets backing those stablecoins are actually there and the issuers are good for their claims.”
Also among the task group’s tasks: investigate establishing a digital stockpile, which could include assets “potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the federal government through its law enforcement efforts.”
Such a reserve would equate cryptocurrencies as commodities, similar to gold, Lynch said. “We do have gold stockpiles, so this order seems in line with that.”
Crypto enthusiasts differ on whether the U.S. should sell its bitcoin – it owns nearly $20 billion worth, obtained through legal seizures, according to crypto tracking firm Arkham Intelligence – or even actively buy Bitcoin and stockpile it, Yadav said.
“Should the U.S. be keeping other kinds of crypto assets? That’s an open question, but this idea has been hotly debated,” she said.
Trump’s order ends with a statement: “The growth of digital financial technology in America must remain unhindered by restrictive regulations or unnecessary government interference.”
How Trump came around to crypto
Trump’s executive order on crypto overturns one that President Joe Biden’s administration issued in 2022. It sought to foster cryptocurrencies and research the possible creation of the Federal Reserve’s own digital currency.
The crypto industry characterized the Biden administration as anti-crypto and has sought action by Congress and regulators to write new cryptocurrency regulations to clarify when a crypto token is a security, commodity or falls into another category. For its part, the Biden administration has said its actions taken against exchanges were because they were breaking rules regarding securities.
The Biden administration’s crypto regulation framework “never happened,” Yadav said. In 2022, when the FTX cryptocurrency exchange went bankrupt and customers lost at least a $1 billion “the results of that lack of action were obvious,” she said.
Trump wasn’t initially a crypto supporter. During his first term in 2019, he posted on X that, “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”
But Trump came around on crypto because Republicans have supported its use. And pro-crypto campaign donations helped fuel Trump’s re-election campaign.
Trump has gotten into the crypto business himself, issuing digital trading cards, which are digital assets known as of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). More recently, he and First Lady Melania Trump both issued meme coins, which are also digital assets that can be traded as cryptocurrency.
“The new $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins are evidence that the new President fully backs the use and issuance of cryptocurrencies,” Lynch said. “These coins are also another way for the president and his family to monetize the industry to their financial benefit.”
Trump’s executive order on crypto: A ‘sea change’
The crypto industry applauded Thursday’s order, with Nathan McCauley, CEO and co-founder of crypto company Anchorage Digital, telling Reuters: “Today’s crypto executive order marks a sea change in U.S. digital asset policy.”
Others including big banks see the order as a step toward making it easier for consumers to do cryptocurrency transactions.
“If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC in an interview from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
However, not everyone is bullish on crypto. “I am not an advocate, nor a critic … it is not what it was supposed to be, which was an alternative to banking,” Anne Walsh, chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners, which is headquartered in New York and Chicago, told Reuters.
“To me, what crypto really correlates to is Nasdaq – it’s a risk-on appetite indicator to me,” she said.
Contributing: Matthew Brown and Bailey Schulz of USA TODAY; Reuters.
Follow Mike Snider on Threads, Bluesky and X: mikegsnider &@mikegsnider.bsky.social &@mikesnider.
What’s everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day