About two weeks before election day last year, the Pew Research Center released a poll that found nearly two-thirds of Americans, 63 percent, were not confident in the reliability or security of cryptocurrency. More than one-third, 38 percent, who had invested in crypto said their investments had done worse than expected. Only 20 percent said they had done better than expected; the rest said their investments had performed about as expected.
Americans as a whole may not be in love with crypto, but their president is.
President Donald Trump has promised to be the “crypto president.” His family has a heavy stake in World Liberty Financial, a company whose mission is to allow users to access financial services using crypto without having to go through intermediaries like banks. On the company’s website, the president is listed as its “chief crypto advocate” while the president’s three sons are called “ambassadors.”
The U.S. Senate last week confirmed Paul Atkins to be President Trump’s chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). What is Atkins likely to do to implement the Trump crypto agenda? What are other federal agencies doing, and what can we expect on Capitol Hill over the next several months?
Let’s take a look.
With Atkins in Place, the SEC is More Equipped to Advance the Trump Digital Asset Agenda
“I promised to make America the bitcoin superpower of the world and the crypto capital of the planet,” President Trump said at a White House crypto summit earlier this year. “And we’re taking historic action to deliver on that promise.”
With Atkins now confirmed to the top SEC job, those actions will now start to take full shape. Indeed, Atkins promised during his Senate confirmation hearing that his “top priority” as SEC chair would be to “provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent, and principled approach.”
Like the president, Atkins has a stake in this market. According to Traders Magazine, Atkins’ ethics disclosure revealed he holds between $1 million and $6 million in personal investments tied directly to the digital asset sector, including stakes in Anchorage Digital, Securitize, and Off the Chain Capital, a crypto-focused investment fund.
The “Crypto 2.0” task force, an SEC panel charged with creating a clear crypto regulatory framework, got a head start on the Trump regulatory agenda while Atkins waited for confirmation. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has led the task force so far. In March, the Task Force announced it would hold four roundtables with industry and members of the public to discuss digital asset regulation, though the work of writing these rules is expected to take some time.
Atkins may not wait until the Task Force’s work is complete before issuing rules, however. At one of the roundtables his predecessor, Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda, suggested that, as a stopgap while the Task Force is working through its discussions and public engagement, the SEC may consider a “time-limited” digital asset oversight framework that would allow firms to keep working while the SEC write a more permanent regulatory structure.
There’s more.
Based on comments Atkins made at his confirmation hearing, other experts expect the new chair to move away from what some perceive as “regulation by enforcement” in favor of a focus on more traditional fraud actions, such as insider trading and market manipulation. Specifically, Atkins said he would favor imposing penalties on regulated entities for regulatory violations.
According to Traders Magazine, Atkins also may:
- Revise the SEC’s Market Structure Modernization Plan, including a reconsideration of changes to order execution rules and retail access models;
- Accelerate clarity around the classification of digital assets, likely through formal rulemaking or enhanced interagency collaboration with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and
- Prioritize increased engagement with trading venues and broker-dealers, particularly those developing or integrating tokenized asset infrastructure.
Just before the Senate confirmed Atkins, the SEC issued a statement saying it does not consider stablecoins to be securities, nor does it consider minting and selling them a securities-related activity that must be disclosed to the agency. Rather, the SEC views stablecoins as tokens designed to maintain a stable value when compared to the U.S. dollar that are readily redeemable and backed by a reserve. The statement will provide a foundation for an expansion of a stablecoin market that had been hindered by regulatory uncertainty.
Digital Asset Agenda Gets Moving on Capitol Hill
Bo Hines, a 29-year former college football player and two-time failed congressional candidate, serves as executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, a newly created office within the White House that is working to shape crypto regulatory policy. According to Fortune, since January, Hines has met with more than 50 crypto lobbyists, investors, company founders, agency officials, and bankers.
Earlier this week, Fortune released an interview with Hines in which the magazine called him one of “the most powerful people in the crypto universe.” Helpfully, Hines offered insight into the administration’s crypto agenda on Capitol Hill.
First up, Hines said, is a bill making its way through Congress now to oversee stablecoins.
The Senate Banking Committee already has approved this legislation. In mid-March on a bipartisan 18-6 vote, the panel advanced the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. The House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) has approved its own bill, the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy (STABLE) Act. As NextGov explained, “Both bills offer the first federal licensing regimes for” stablecoins. The STABLE Act “outlines a regulatory framework for the issuance and trading of a dollar-backed stablecoin” while the GENIUS Act “sets similar regulations for the digital asset market, such as licensing regimes, one-to-one reserve maintenance and disclosure requirements, but offers consumers priority in bankruptcy proceedings.”
The bills are both awaiting action by their respective full chambers. White House officials have said the president is hopeful he can sign stablecoin legislation into law before the August recess.
After the stablecoin bill, Hines told Fortune he hopes to help advance legislation that would establish specific regulatory guidance for the industry regarding “everything from issuing new tokens to how crypto exchanges operate.” HFSC members started deliberations on this framework before leaving for the Easter recess. HFSC Chairman French Hill (R-Ark.) said, “It is incumbent on us to build on that momentum and continue working toward a comprehensive regulatory framework that establishes clear rules of the road for digital asset markets.”
When it comes to digital assets in general, Republicans have emphasized the need to modernize outdated securities laws, clarify regulatory jurisdiction, and protect the right to self-custody. Democrats, meanwhile, have accused the industry of exploiting regulatory ambiguity for self-enrichment. They also have warned about weakened enforcement.
Other Agencies Also Are Revamping Approaches to Crypto
President Trump is using other federal agencies to advance his crypto agenda as well.
On April 7, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo eliminating the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which, up until that point, had been the primary federal government unit investigating crypto-related crimes. The Justice Department will instead outsource crypto prosecution to U.S. attorneys’ offices and will refocus national headquarters’ efforts on crimes involving terrorism and human trafficking.
Of course, there also is the president’s goal of creating a strategic bitcoin (BTC) reserve. In a March executive order, President Trump declared that “it is the policy of the United States to establish” such a reserve and it also is the federal government’s policy “to establish a United States Digital Asset Stockpile that can serve as a secure account for orderly and strategic management of the United States’ other digital asset holdings.”
As part of this order:
- The U.S. Department of the Treasury must establish an office to administer and maintain control of custodial accounts collectively known as the “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” capitalized with all BTC held by the Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings or in satisfaction of any civil money penalty.
- Treasury must establish an office to administer and maintain control of custodial accounts collectively known as the “United States Digital Asset Stockpile,” capitalized with all digital assets owned by the Treasury, other than BTC, that were forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings.
- Treasury and the U.S. Department of Commerce must develop strategies for acquiring additional government BTC.
- Federal agency leaders may not sell or otherwise dispose of any government digital assets.
Former SEC officials are skeptical of this agenda. Amanda Fischer, who served as chief of staff under former Chair Gary Gensler, told Fortune the Trump administration’s full embrace of crypto is “dangerous.” In particular, she argued a strategic reserve would empower the government to prop up prices in a single asset class. “I am very concerned that they are engaged in policy actions that will help a very select group of individuals and companies at the expense of American investors and the stability of our financial system,” Fischer told Fortune.
Republicans, of course, would disagree. At the March White House crypto summit, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “President Trump is creating assets for the American people, while most past presidents have created debt.”
Will Americans start to believe that promise — and in crypto? Time will tell. But as the Pew Research Center data shows, Trump administration officials have their work cut out for them.