Trump Goes 6 for 8 on Crypto Promises During First Week

The crypto industry wanted Donald Trump to become America’s 47th president, and they spent big to make it happen.

Around 48% of all corporate money contributed to the 2024 election cycle came from crypto firms, and the 2024 elections saw 250 “pro crypto” members of Congress elected along with 16 “pro crypto” senators.

Now that Trump is sitting in the White House, the sector is increasingly keen to discover what exactly the return on its investment might be. As a candidate, Trump made numerous sweeping promises and appeals to the crypto industry. As a president, he has yet to mention bitcoin in an official capacity.

But while the first few days of the 47th presidency lacked much crypto meat, the tide began to turn on Thursday (Jan. 23) as America’s first “crypto president” issued an executive order, entitled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” touching on many of the sector’s wants, needs and concerns.

The executive order called for a comprehensive draft of federal crypto regulations, as well as for first steps to be taken around exploring the creation of a national digital asset stockpile and the banning of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

On Wednesday (Jan. 22), the president pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, fulfilling another one of his campaign promises to the crypto sector.

Among the more crucial of the Trump administration’s recent crypto actions was the Thursday decision of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to rescind the Biden-era Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 122 (SAB 122), an accounting bulletin that required crypto custodians to record a safeguarding obligation.

The repeal of SAB 122, observers believe, will ultimately allow banks to interact more freely with the crypto sector.

Read more: 3 Things to Watch as Trump Becomes Memecoin Billionaire and US President

While campaigning as America’s “first crypto president,” Trump made at least eight promises to his crypto supporters. They were: to free Ross Ulbricht, fire then-chairman of the SEC Gary Gensler, establish a bitcoin national reserve, kill “operation chokepoint 2.0,” protect self-custody, ban the digital dollar CBDC, mine bitcoin in the U.S., and put clear regulations in place.

Despite a slow start, the administration was able to take the first step toward the majority, or six of eight, of those promises.

Still, before undertaking any of those actions, the new president announced two meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, a move that critics — many from the crypto industry — alleged would distract from and even undermine the legitimization of financial blockchain use cases and other crypto assets such as stablecoins. These tokens soared on inauguration day Monday (Jan. 20) but faced immediate volatility, plummeting Tuesday (Jan. 21).

“The main thing people are thinking about crypto is, ‘Oh, it’s just a casino for these meme coins,’” said Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and partner at the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, per a report. “It does the opposite of validating us, it makes it look completely unserious.”

Read more: Making Sense of Trump’s CBDC Ban and Crypto Stockpile Order 

Still, as PYMNTS wrote, Trump’s election “marks a significant policy shift that is lighter on regulations and guardrails and more pro-growth and pro-innovation.” That is increasingly being borne out across the marketplace.

Per a Sunday (Jan. 26) report, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is even shutting down its U.K. office amid a new focus on the U.S. crypto sector following Donald Trump’s election. The investor opened the U.K. branch in 2023, its first outside the U.S., amid regulatory pressure in the U.S.

At the same time, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon Musk is reportedly considering using blockchain technology at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), per a Saturday (Jan. 25) report. Musk, head of the newly created agency, has floated the idea of using a digital ledger to monitor federal spending, make payments, secure data and manage government buildings.

1Money’s recent $20 million funding round to develop a stablecoin payment network exemplifies the growing appetite for alternative payment solutions that offer both stability and efficiency, and shows that crypto startups, too, are carving a niche.

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