NEWSLETTER
Sitting under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, more than two dozen of the most powerful figures in the cryptocurrency industry of the United States, together for a value of many billions of dollars, gathered in the White House on Friday for an audience with President Trump.
When Trump entered the dining room of the state adorned after a brief wait, the executives got up to applaud him.
“Many of you have been fighting for years,” Trump said while the room calmed down. “It is an honor to be with you in the White House.”
Trump was celebrating a “cryptographic summit” of his first type, which met face to face with the leaders of practically all the main cryptographic companies in the United States. Only a small portion of the meeting, which was scheduled to last four hours, was transmitted to the public. But he offered a vivid illustration of Trump's recent crypto hug, a renegade industry that has been fighting for years with US regulators.
Several executives, including Tyler and Cameron Winklevos, the founders of the Gemini crypto exchange, offered words of gratitude to Mr. Trump. They called him “wonderful”, saying they were “delighted” with their focus.
“The people of high intellectual coefficient around this table,” Trump replied.
Since assuming the position, Trump has orchestrated a complete transformation of the federal cryptography policy. The Bag and Securities Commission has almost completely reversed an aggressive campaign of the Biden Administration to take energetic measures against the industry. The agency, which moves with surprising speed, has issued a legal guide to help cryptographic companies, finished investigations in the main companies and eliminated demands against two of the largest exchanges, Coinbase and Kraken.
The leaders of both companies were invited to the White House on Thursday. Brian Armstrong, executive director of Coinbase, sat two seats from the president.
“He points out that the industry is finally a serious industry,” said JP Richardson, who runs the Exodus cryptographic firm and was invited to the Trump summit. “We believe that technology can fundamentally change the world. And it is really important for this administration to take it seriously. “
The meeting was also a reminder of Trump's personal investment in Cryptography, which ethics experts have described as an alarming conflict of interest. The guest list included <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://x.com/ZachWitkoff/status/1897021137173012797″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Zach Witkoffson of Steve Witkoff, a close friend of the president who serves as a special envoy of the administration to the Middle East. The young Mr. Witkoff is a founder of World Liberty Financial, a cryptographic business that Trump promoted strongly last year, and from which he and his family directly benefit.
Once a cryptoptic, Mr. Trump adopted digital currencies in the campaign last year, since cryptographic companies spent tens of millions of dollars to support it, as well as the candidates of the Congress who supported technology.
Soon, Trump entered the market himself. The past fall, he and his children worked with the Witkoffs to start World Liberty Financial, promoting it as a platform to borrow and loans in cryptography. World Liberty has its own digital currency, WLFI, and the Trump family receives a sales cut.
A few days before its inauguration, Trump also began selling a call memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency linked to an internet joke or a mascot of celebrities. The currency, called $ Trump, emerged briefly and then crashed, costing investors a cumulative $ 2 billion.
Since he won the elections, Trump has taken measures to boost the industry's perspectives, designating cryptography supporters for the main administration positions and asking federal agencies to develop a new approach to regulation.
On Thursday night, he signed an executive order to create a bitcoin National Reserve and other cryptocurrencies. The plan was launched by cryptographic executives as a strategy to remove national debt.
The skeptics have attacked the proposal as a scheme to enrich a small number of cryptographic investors. Even some of Mr. Trump's supporters in the world of technology have joined criticism.
After Trump made fun of the reserve announcement on social networks last weekend, Joe Lonsdale, an outstanding technological investor, <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://x.com/jtlonsdale/status/1896245689488920748″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>wrote In x that the government should not waste money in “cryptography schemes.”
Nothing of that dissent was on exhibition at the summit. Sitting next to David Sacks, the Tsar of the White House cryptography policy, Trump acclaimed the event as a turning point in the treatment of the nation to the cryptographic industry.
“I promised to make the United States the bitcoin superpower of the world and the cryptographic capital of the planet,” Trump said. “We are taking historical measures to fulfill that promise.”
He said that bitcoin's new national storage would create a strong virtual Knox for the holdings of the nation. “Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said.
In his own comments, Mr. Sacks praised Mr. Trump's leadership, saying that the administration was “moving at technological speed.” The industry had been subject to “prosecution and persecution” under the Biden administration, he said.
“No one knows how you feel better than you,” Sacks told the president.
Then he gestured to the Winklevos twins, sitting on the other side of the room.
“You said something before I thought it was really deep,” Sacks told them. “A year ago, you thought it would be more likely to end in jail than in the White House.”
(Tagstotranslate) Policy and Government of the United States
