The new best friend of cryptocurrency executives is nicely positioned to help them from his perch in the Oval Office. But as happens to many others in President Donald Trump’s orbit, friends can swiftly turn into “frenemies.”
Crypto is no exception, and already a business that felt persecuted under President Joe Biden has had to temper its expectations for progress under Trump. So far, life with a president who promised to make America the “crypto capital of the planet” has been decidedly mixed.
Taking office after he collected a fortune in crypto campaign contributions, Trump initiated a government working group on digital assets, dropped legal cases against crypto kingpins and convened a crypto summit at the White House. So far, so good, from the industry’s perspective.
But like many other businesses that wanted an end to Biden’s policies and suddenly got socked with new tariffs and geopolitical threats, Trump 2.0 has delivered less than expected so far — and the future remains uncertain.
Crypto refers to digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum that can stand in for government-issued money and trade on electronic markets around the world. It’s a scandal-tarred business that many U.S. financial institutions have held at arm’s-length because of crypto’s dark past and hostility from federal regulators.
This page has pushed for strict new rules to help ensure the integrity of global finance and reduce risks for the retail clients that make up much of crypto’s growing customer base. Responsible operators itching to expand their crypto investments in the U.S. want the same thing — and they have reason to expect it with the new administration.
Trump has appointed a crypto-friendly cabinet and sympathetic regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. But substantive changes are still in the future.
At a financial markets conference delving into the outlook for crypto, crystal balls were clouded by Trump’s unpredictability. “Post-election, a lot of us were euphoric,” Citigroup Chair John Dugan told attendees last week at the Futures Industry Association confab in Boca Raton, Florida, which we attended. “The business climate has gotten a lot more cautious.”
Still, after years on the defensive, crypto operators are starting to play offense, coordinating policy goals with regulators who just months ago shunned them and pushing for legislation that would open doors firmly closed under Biden.
During their recent meeting at the White House, crypto executives say, Trump pledged to support legislation establishing a solid U.S. market structure for crypto and settling jurisdictional conflicts between the SEC and CFTC. He also agreed, they say, to push for separate legislation legitimizing stablecoins, which are digital currencies pegged to gold or another relatively stable asset to reduce price volatility.
“This means we can get legislation this year,” said Alesia Haas, chief financial officer at Coinbase, a big crypto exchange targeted in an SEC lawsuit under Biden that Trump has since withdrawn. “It will be a win if we get these bills.”
The legislation could be a win, but details matter, and the crypto industry is not necessarily united on key issues. How, for instance, will the U.S. govern conflicts of interest if a company tries to serve as trading firm, exchange and clearing house all in one? Mature market operators such as Chicago’s CME Group rejected that approach when it was championed by Sam Bankman-Fried, a former crypto wunderkind now serving a long prison term for fraud.
Further, several of Trump’s moves have raised alarms among established banks and exchanges that want crypto to move into the financial mainstream. Through an executive order, the president established a federal crypto stockpile apparently intended to function as a strategic reserve. But instead of limiting it to the dominant Bitcoin, the stockpile also includes seemingly random digital currencies of unproven value.
Trump also unnerved market participants with his launch of personal meme coins for himself and first lady Melania Trump shortly after his election. That could be yet another scandal in the making, as they enable anyone to, in effect, put money in the president’s pocket. An industry marred by hype and manipulation won’t make it into the mainstream if the president treats it as another Trump University-style quick-buck scheme for enriching himself.
We see potential for progress ahead, hand in hand with risks. Crypto is a booming business, yet much of its trading occurs abroad via creative products such as perpetual futures. These crypto derivatives markets should be free to operate in the U.S., on robust platforms that ensure market integrity.
Trump has opened the door wider for crypto. But the industry’s key to long-term mainstream success will be hewing to the straight and narrow.
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