The White House held its first crypto-summit one day after President Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve for the U.S.
Both moves signal a sea change in policy towards cryptocurrency from the Biden administration, which was often viewed by industry insiders as hostile to the sector.
“I know many of you have been fighting for years for this,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of bitcoin elites Friday at the White House. “Last year, I promised to make America the Bitcoin superpower of the world and the crypto capital of the planet, and we’re taking historic action to deliver on that promise.”
He slammed the Biden administration, which implemented a series of regulations to constrain the crypto industry. President Biden also appointed Gary Gensler as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he warned the industry was filled with “failures, frauds and bankruptcies.”
Mr. Trump made it clear to the assembled crowd that he would be more welcoming.
“They strong-armed banks into closing the accounts of crypto businesses and entrepreneurs, effectively blocking some money transfers to and from exchanges and they weaponized government against the entire industry,” he said. “I know that feeling also. Maybe better than you do.”
Among the industry leaders who attended the summit were Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chair of MicroStrategy; Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of World Liberty Financial, and Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood Markets.
“From this day on, America will follow the rule that every Bitcoin knows very well. Never sell your Bitcoin. That’s a little phrase that they have. Is it right? Who the hell knows,” Mr. Trump told the crowd.
The reserve, according to the order, will profit from Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, so it will not come out of the taxpayers’ pockets.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are expected to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers.
It is estimated that the U.S. government owns about 200,000 bitcoin, but a complete audit has never been finished, so the order calls for a full audit of the federal government’s digital asset holdings.
The audit will be conducted by every department that has digital assets on its balance sheet, and the agencies must self-report effectively to the Secretary of the Treasury and the president’s work group on digital assets.
The executive order provides that the government will not be acquiring other digital assets.
“So we’ll take in that report, and then the Secretary of the Treasury will be setting up accounts within the Treasury Department, one for Bitcoin and then one for all other digital assets,” said David Sacks, who is Mr. Trump’s “crypto czar.”
Mr. Sacks described the reserve as a “digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency,” often referred to as “digital gold.”
“I think the truth is it should have been done a long time ago. Over the past decade or so, the federal government has accumulated something like 400,000 Bitcoin through civil asset forfeitures procedures,” Mr. Sacks said.
“Unfortunately, we did not have a long-term strategy for maximizing the value of this asset as a country, and so roughly half that Bitcoin was sold something at like $370 million today. That would be worth over $17 billion if we had held it.”
Mr. Sacks differentiated the functions of the stockpile and the reserve. The stockpile is designed to house all digital assets that the federal government owns except for Bitcoin, while Bitcoin goes into the reserve.
The U.S. will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the reserve, but it will be kept as a store of value.
The order establishes a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, managed by the Treasury Department, to hold other seized cryptocurrencies.
The summit also focused on the legal battles crypto firms faced during the prior administration that had a hostile stance towards cryptocurrency.
“I think it’s safe to say that the administration wants to end the war on crypto. We promised to do that. We want to end operation chokepoint 2.0, which unfairly persecuted and prosecuted founders just for starting crypto companies,” Mr. Sacks said. “They were often debanked— not just their companies, but them personally.”
Senate Republicans, led by Banking Committee chairman Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, have drawn up legislation to remove a roadblock to federal supervision. The bill is seen as a first step to address debanking and has the support of all Republicans on his committee.
