First-ever White House crypto summit leaves some investors unhappy

The White House hosted its first-ever “crypto summit” Friday, convening top executives from various digital asset firms to discuss the Trump administration’s commitment to rolling back the aggressive regulatory posture the Biden administration took toward the industry.

However, some in the crypto world were left disappointed that the Trump administration did not signal more active support for the industry, leading the prices of the very assets the summit was supposed to acclaim to sag Friday.

The price of bitcoin was down about 3% in late-afternoon trading and was set to finish the week down approximately 7%, to $87,000.

The groundwork for the lackluster reaction was laid late Thursday, when Trump’s “crypto czar,” venture capitalist David Sacks, announced that the president had signed an order to create a “strategic bitcoin reserve.”

While that measure has been aggressively pushed by the crypto community, the order indicated the reserve would only comprise current bitcoin holdings previously seized by federal law enforcement agencies. A separate “digital asset stockpile” would also be created to hold non-bitcoin digital tokens, like ethereum and ripple, that have also been seized in enforcement proceedings.

However, the executive order gave no explicit guarantee or timetable for the government to begin making new cryptocurrency purchases outright.

If such purchases were to ever occur, it said, they would be undertaken in a budget-neutral way and at no additional cost to taxpayers.

To be sure, the very existence of a White House crypto summit, let alone a strategic reserve, represents a sea change for an industry that has long fought to gain mainstream acceptance. And despite its recent declines, the price of bitcoin remains about 25% higher than its level before Trump secured a second presidential term in early November.

Trump himself has jumped headfirst into the crypto world, launching his own “meme coin” just prior to his inauguration in January that briefly saw his paper net worth explode by billions. The coin’s value has since plunged.

While Trump on Friday doubled down on his desire to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world” and a leader in cutting-edge financial technology, some investors were still left wanting more.

“Trump is now officially ‘off the hook’ for what the Bitcoin community did for him,” Jeff Park, an executive with the Bitwise crypto investment group, said in a post on X Friday before the summit concluded, referring to the creation of the strategic reserve. “If you want something else later, he’ll want something else from now on.”

Park continued: “We asked for too little. Having only bitcoin and not the rest of the altcoins in the strategic reserve is not a win. ‘Exploring’ or ‘studying’ concepts is not a win. ‘Not selling’ is not a win. None of these things at the core require an EO at all to do anything.”

On a call with reporters before the summit Friday, White House officials likened the establishment of the reserve to a “digital Fort Knox” that would ensure the U.S. maintains proper control over its digital holdings. Previously, the officials said, the government had sold off its holdings in an ad hoc manner that, they argued, has resulted in lost value to taxpayers given bitcoin’s steady rise in value.

The officials also dispelled a rumor that had been circulating — with excitement — in online crypto spaces that individuals would not have to pay taxes on gains from crypto holdings.

And, the officials said, observers had read too much into the president’s initial social media post announcing the creation of the reserve when he initially mentioned three other non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies would serve as founding tokens for the reserve.

The crypto industry played an outsize role in the 2024 election, with crypto-related political action committees and affiliated groups spending more than $245 million for last year’s cycle, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Nearly half of all corporate dollars that flowed into the election came from the crypto industry, according to the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen.

For those efforts, even if the industry has not seen the U.S. government jump headfirst into crypto markets, it has nevertheless won a far more encouraging regulatory approach. Trump said Friday his administration would “end the federal bureaucracy’s war on crypto.”

“We feel like pioneers,” Trump said.