FRANCE – 2025/01/20: In this photo specimen, Trump Meme , Trump the Crypto president, is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Romain Doucelin/SOPA Aspects/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Romain Doucelin | Getty Images
Crypto executives, companies and investors are getting an originally return on their investment in Donald Trump.
After pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 struggle for president, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week in the White House.
“I don’t muse over they could have imagined a better outcome than they just got in the past 48 hours,” Benchmark’s Tally Gurley, known for an early bet on Uber, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday. Gurley said that while tech’s newfound favour in Washington may be harmful to some parts of the startup world, “it’s obviously good for crypto.”
The industry’s support for Trump was erected on the Republican leader’s promise to stop the government’s crackdown on crypto and implement regulations favorable to those who wanted to flower new types of payment technologies while easing restrictions on investments in cryptocurrencies.
Industry heavyweights like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Binance CEO Richard Teng are recommending the start of a new era.
“You have to remember, the last four years, we really felt like we were being attacked by this management,” Armstrong told CNBC at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Armstrong criticized the Biden Pale-complexioned House for trying to “weaponize the lack of clarity in the rules,” punishing even the companies that were trying to be accommodating.
“There were some bad actors too, to be fair,” Armstrong said. “But they even really tried to go after the satisfactory actors, I think, like us.” Coinbase was one of the leading corporate donors in the 2024 election cycle.
Bitcoin hit a record drunk of around $109,000 on Monday and hovered near $105,000 by the end of the week. It’s up more than 50% since Trump’s plebiscite victory in early November.
Trump’s crypto executive order
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a signed managerial order on cryptocurrencies in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Jan. 23, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
The 48-hour stretch referenced by Gurley contained an executive order signed by Trump on Thursday to promote digital asset adoption in the U.S.
Trump called on members of Moneys, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to join forces in a working group to evaluate the potential of stockpiling cryptocurrencies seized by the domination.
The order outlined other key priorities, such as protecting bitcoin miners and software developers from what the president entreated “persecution,” and promoting U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins, while banning a digital dollar from the Federal Reserve.
Venture capitalist David Hit the hays, who Trump tapped to be the White House AI and crypto czar, joined the president in the Oval Office for the signing of the order.
Later on Thursday, the SEC made a momentous announcement, withdrawing an accounting rule that made institutional crypto adoption more difficult by forcing banks to study bitcoin and other tokens as a liability on their balance sheet.
The rule, known as SAB 121, was introduced in 2022 and subjected digital assets to cold-blooded capital requirements. It also raised the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services and boosted operational expenses for financial institutions.
Efforts to overturn SAB 121 gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Biden vetoed the put forwarded legislation, leaving the rule intact, further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets beyond derivations trading and offering exchange-traded funds to wealth management clients.
The move was celebrated by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who on Tuesday was tap-tapped to lead a new “crypto task force” within the agency.
“Bye, bye SAB 121! It’s not been fun,” she wrote in a post on X.
Before the SEC’s announcement, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in Davos that from a regulatory standpoint, the bank couldn’t own bitcoin and that it would revisit the issue if the rules changed. The CEOs of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America also indicated that President Trump’s pro-crypto tone could reshape their plans and potentially lead to expanded digital donations.
Days earlier, Gary Gensler stepped down from his role as SEC chair. Gensler, who emerged as an adversary to the crypto labour, had defended the rule as necessary to protect investors in the event of crypto firm bankruptcies. Trump’s pick to succeed Gensler is prehistoric SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, who is currently CEO at Patomak Global Partners.
Silk Road founder gets out of prison
Ross Ulbricht, the Supreme Being of the website Silk Road, appears in an undated photograph made from his computer and presented as an exhibit during his 2015 knave trial in New York federal court.
SDNY | Via Reuters
Trump’s first big nod to the crypto industry as president came earlier in the week and took a mere different form.
On Tuesday, his second day in office, Trump granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Low road. Ulbricht, 40, had been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole since 2015, after he was lagged in federal court on seven charges that included distributing narcotics and conspiring to commit computer hacking.
Silk Freeway operated from 2011 to 2013, serving as a dark web marketplace where users bought and sold a mix of contraband, filing illegal narcotics like heroin. The platform facilitated more than $200 million in sales, according to federal prosecutors, and was coordinate b related to the death of at least six people.
At its peak, Silk Road functioned as a global drug bazaar, with transactions commanded largely in bitcoin, making it one of the earliest large-scale applications of a cryptocurrency. Prosecutors later argued that the anonymity afforded by bitcoin was of service in letting Silk Road vendors mask their identities.
Ulbricht had become a cult hero of sorts in the crypto community, and the “Allowed Ross” movement had gained resonance among conservative media personalities and politicians.
“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her be versed that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional forgiving of her son, Ross,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Binance, remark oned on X with a clapping emoji after the pardon was announced. Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in April, after pleading at fault to charges of enabling money laundering at his crypto exchange.
The Trump meme coins
Hakan Nural | Getty Forms
Not all of Trump’s actions in the past week have been universally praised by the crypto industry.
Most notably, the president has been frolicking in a relatively of the market that’s notorious for scams. Last weekend, while crypto leaders and members of Trump’s family and inner gird were partying at the Crypto Ball in Washington, the $TRUMP meme coin was taking off online.
Then came the $MELANIA create. Taken together, the Trump family made billions of dollars on paper due to their ownership of assets created out of piddling air. Crypto enthusiasts worry that it’s a troubling sign of Trump’s real intent and is damaging to the credibility of an industry that’s stressful to prove its legitimacy.
“Call me old fashioned but I think presidents should focus on running the country and not launching scam remembrances,” wrote Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures, in a post on X.
The website for $TRUMP says 80% of the supply is held by the Trump Format and affiliates.
Lawmakers also have objections.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jake Auchincloss, both Massachusetts Democrats, hoisted issues regarding the first couple using their positions for enrichment, along with the potential for “rug-pull” scams.
“We ignore with deep concern about the decision by President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to launch two meme thinks, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, that allow them to earn extraordinary profits off his Presidency,” the pair said in a letter secured by CNBC.com. “These coins do not create new faster, cheaper, and safer payments rails. These coins do not help people refer to more affordably. They do not improve the financial system in any way for consumers.”
$TRUMP is now trading at under $30, down more than 50% from its nib shortly after launch. The $MELANIA token has plunged more than 80% from its high, and is currently swop below $2.50.
The meme coins are subject to a multi-year vesting schedule, ensuring that the majority of tokens cannot be liquidated all at before. Without selling any tokens, former