The Orange Man is back in the White House, and he made a fair share of promises about Orange Coin – and its orbit of crypto assets – on his campaign trail to the Oval Office. Now that President Trump is back, Bitcoiners and the cryptosphere at large are waiting to see if he’ll make good on these promises.
But so far, all he’s done is launch his eponymous memecoin. Does that necessarily undermine his campaign pledges? Probably not, but it certainly may call into question whether he takes “Bitcoin, crypto, and everything else [we’re] playing with” seriously.
In an effort to curry favor with Bitcoin patricians and plebs alike, Trump’s promises catered to the crypto industry’s survival instinct (turn down the heat on crypto regulatory actions), to number-go-up cupidity (establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve), and to crypto-anarchist fantasy (the pardoning of Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht.
Let’s break down each promise, one-by-one.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Last summer at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Trump promised that, “it will be the policy of my administration to keep 100 percent of all bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires in the future … as a core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile.”
There have been few specific details from the Trump campaign itself around this claim, but the base assumption is that he would use an Executive Order to prevent the federal government from selling any bitcoin it currently holds. The government acquired the majority of this bitcoin (currently 198,109 BTC as of Jan 15) through seizures related to criminal activities, most notably from the Silk Road darknet marketplace.
But at the time of writing, there are still many unknowns about what forms a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could take beyond his initial promise. Does Trump intend to expand the United States’ bitcoin reserves by acquiring more BTC? On the federal level, he may be able to expand it by allocating part of the Exchange Stabilization Fund into bitcoin, but the legality of this isn’t clear.
Cynthia Lummis put forward a bill parallel to Trump’s promise which would direct the US Treasury to buy up to 1 million BTC, but Congress would need to ratify this.
We gave our predictions on what the SBR might look like last week. TL;DR: We’re skeptical of anything but an Executive Order in the short term, which a following organization could easily overturn.
Crypto-friendly SEC and Crypto Advisory Council
In his Bitcoin 2024 keynote, Trump said that, when he takes office, laws and regulations will be written by “people who love your industry” rather than those “who hate it.”
This was followed by a promise to “fire Gary Gensler on day one,” to which the audience replied with thunderous applause in clear repudiation of Biden’s SEC chair. Well, ole Gensler beat Trump to the punch and announced his resignation shortly after the election.
To fill his place, President Trump has appointed Mark Uyeda, an SEC Commissioner since June 30, 2022. While on Fox Business last October, Uyeda criticized the SEC’s treatment of crypto as “a disaster for the whole industry.” He particularly lambasted Gary Gensler’s SEC for “guidance by enforcement,” which refers to discretionary enforcement actions against cryptocurrency practitioners – typically, companies that launched initial coin offerings (ICOs) – without any lucid guidance or industry-specific policies. For years, the SEC pointed to the Howey Test, a checklist designating what the Commission looks for when evaluating what is or isn’t a security that resulted from a 1946 Supreme Court case, as a litmus test for whether or not a cryptocurrency is a security.
On its face, crypto industry participants are chalking up Uyeda’s appointment as a win, but there’s little beyond words to forecast is his impact will be positive or negative.
Looking beyond the SEC, Trump reportedly intends to issue a round of executive orders “to reduce the regulatory burden faced by cryptocurrency companies and promote digital asset adoption,” according to Reuters. This could include an order to repeal the SEC’s SAB 121, a bulletin that raised the burden for banks and other companies to custody cryptocurrency, as well as one to end Operation Chokepoint 2.0, the unofficial name for the Biden administration’s surreptitious attempt to de-bank crypto companies.
One of these executive orders could establish the Crypto Advisory Council, formally known as the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets. Trump has tapped the aid of former North Carolina congressional candidate, Bo Hines, to serve as executive director of this council. Additionally, Trump is also seeking the aid of centi-millionaire entrepreneur and investor David Sacks as crypto and AI czar, a position tasked with advising on crypto and AI-specific regulation. Sacks is an outspoken bitcoin/crypto supporter, and he’s invested in cryptofund Multicoin Capital.
Free Ross day one
Last May at the Libertarian National Convention, Donald Trump made the promise that “on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht,” eliciting cheers from the audience in the room (which had been mostly neutral with occasional jeering up to that point). News of the promise spread like wildfire over Bitcoin twitter, galvanizing many single-issue voters in favor of Trump.
Later that summer, just days after the attempted assassination, Trump reaffirmed his promise at the Bitcoin 2024 Nashville conference.
Ross is currently serving a double life sentence plus 40 years without the possibility of parole for the “Kingpin Charge” (Continuing Criminal Enterprise under 21 U.S. Code 848) from running the Silk Road darknet marketplace. This suite of charges is usually used against leaders of large-scale drug trafficking organizations. None of Ross’s convictions were for violent crimes.
Ross’ freedom has long been a rallying cry of Libertarians, Bitcoiners, and crypto broadly. It would be a historic moment for the entire crypto ecosystem to see Ross’s sentence commuted.
