From the currently disclosed information, the summit's results are more focused on political rhetoric.

Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

Cover: Photo by Edoardo Cuoghi on Unsplash

In the early morning of March 8, 2025, the White House held its first Crypto Summit.

Trump repeated the executive order he had previously signed on the reserve of Altcoin assets, and said the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce would explore new ways to accumulate more BTC for the reserve, provided that taxpayers would not have to pay any cost. He ordered federal agencies to take inventory of the Crypto assets currently held by the U.S. government and determine how to transfer them to the Treasury Department, to be stored in a new U.S. Crypto Asset Reserve.

According to a list disclosed by FOX Business reporter Eleanor Terrett, the participants in the first White House Crypto Summit included:

• House Majority Whip Tom Emmer
• Chairman of the House Crypto Assets Subcommittee Bryan Steil
• a16z partner Chris Dixon
• Mara CEO Fred Thiel
• BitGo CEO Mike Belshe
• Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse
• Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo
• FalconX CEO Raghu Yarlagadda
• Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley
• Crypto.com CEO Kris
• Gemini founders Winklevoss brothers
• Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev
• Kraken CEO Arjun Sethi
• Strategy founder Michael Saylor
• Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong
• WisdomTree CEO Jonathan Steinberg
• Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov
• Multicoin managing partner Kyle Samani
• WLFI co-founder Zach Witkoff
• Exodus CEO JP Richardson
• Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang
• Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey

Since this meeting was a closed-door session and not live-streamed, in the limited public information available, the participants in the White House Crypto Summit took turns speaking, but most of them were praising the series of developments in the Crypto sector under Trump's administration, as well as Trump himself.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Baesent discussed establishing a strategic BTC reserve and Crypto asset inventory, "regulation of Crypto assets," and a federal framework for stablecoins, and said the Treasury Department would work closely with the IRS and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to "revoke and modify" guidelines that had previously hampered the ability of Crypto asset companies to operate in the U.S.

Trump said he expects the House and Senate to pass stablecoin legislation before the "August recess".

Performance Over Substance

Looking at the key points of the summit, the Trump administration and the participants have, as always, released a large amount of rhetoric about the U.S. becoming a Crypto hub, establishing a digital gold reserve, and ending hostile policies towards the Crypto industry, seemingly outlining a grand blueprint. However, behind these grandiose statements, the real policy details that can be implemented remain vague, especially in areas such as stablecoin legislation, banking compliance access, and Crypto asset taxation, without providing a clear timetable or implementation path.

But for the market, the most important expectation of this summit is not the kind of grand slogans like "the U.S. will become a Crypto hub," but whether concrete and feasible implementation plans can be seen. Although the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed to be pro-Crypto, if it cannot provide corresponding legislative, regulatory, and execution details, the policy dividends that the market expects will still remain on paper.

In other words, after repeatedly touting the "pro-Crypto" policy slogans, whether concrete supporting measures can be introduced is the real core concern of the market. The industry's demand for a clear and stable regulatory environment is becoming increasingly urgent, and it is for this reason that the industry has high expectations for this summit. However, from the currently disclosed information, the summit's results are more focused on political rhetoric, lacking substantive content to further drive policy implementation.

Therefore, although the White House's first crypto summit gathered many big shots and regulatory officials, the overall situation still presented a "performance over substance" scenario. Trump's pro-crypto attitude is more a manifestation of political cunning, where he openly and enthusiastically expresses support, but can avoid or delay key regulatory issues that truly impact the industry's prospects. The statements of many participants on site may seem enthusiastic, but most of them are just echoing or going along with Trump's political tone, which has actually obscured the critical issues of compliance, taxation, and market order that need to be discussed.

In other words, although the summit was "thunderous", it was more like a political statement or political show, using the summit to create a public opinion momentum, far from truly shaping the landscape of crypto regulation.

ADA, SOL, XRP are only mentioned because they are among the top five in market capitalization

Interestingly, according to the White House announcement, the executive order signed by Trump includes two parts: crypto strategic reserves and inventories. The strategic reserves will only include BTC (the digital asset with the largest store of value), using about 200,000 tokens held by the government through criminal and civil forfeitures over the years.

The other is a digital asset reserve that includes assets other than Bitcoin, possibly XRP, ADA, ETH and SOL (announced by the president last weekend) as well as potentially other assets. The main difference between reserves and inventories is that the government will not actively seek ways to purchase more inventory assets. The government will only explore using government funds (if they can find a budget-neutral way to do so) to purchase BTC. The Treasury Secretary can determine a responsible management strategy, including assets that may be sold from the U.S. digital asset inventory.

In a pre-summit interview with Bloomberg, crypto czar David Sacks responded to the question of whether ADA, SOL, and XRP will be included in the U.S. crypto reserve, and why the president mentioned them: "Well, the president mentioned the top five cryptocurrencies by market cap. So I think people are reading a little too much into it. He just mentioned the top five that we actually hold."

He emphasized, "Let me say it again, we need to do an audit (indicating that the U.S. will begin auditing its existing crypto holdings). Today we're not sure if the federal government owns these other altcoins, we know the government owns Bitcoin. I believe the government also owns some Ethereum. As for the others, I'm not too sure. That's why we need to do an audit. Frankly, no one has been able to give a definitive answer about what assets the federal government owns. The reason for this part of the problem is that we didn't have a crypto asset strategy before. That's why we missed the opportunity to accumulate a lot of value for the American people."

Recently, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also stated that he was unaware of the plan to include ADA in the strategic reserve. "We have no knowledge of ADA being included in the strategic reserve, this is news to me. We didn't even know this was happening, no one has even talked to us about it."

This shows that the U.S. government's concepts of crypto strategic reserves and crypto asset inventories are more in the stage of an unformed policy conception and public opinion statement. The government's actual holdings of these altcoins, management strategies, and even whether they will be included in the strategic reserves themselves, all lack clear official auditing and regulatory plans. The government's claim to own the top five assets by market cap is more like a vague external statement, and may only be an example-like mention in political discourse.

In this process, the Trump administration on the one hand wants to send a strong signal that we are seriously building a crypto asset reserve system to demonstrate its pro-crypto stance; on the other hand, it lacks detailed institutional arrangements for the current holdings and future purchase plans. David Sacks also admitted that the scale of altcoin holdings still needs to be audited and sorted out, and the compliance and accounting systems between different government departments and between the federal and state governments are not fully prepared to accommodate these assets. This has led to an awkward situation where the government makes high-profile claims about its crypto asset layout, but the market finds a lack of substantive transparency in the relevant information, and even the project founders are unaware of being included in the reserves. As a result, SOL fell 9% in the short term, reaching a low of around $137, while ADA and XRP fell around 7%.

Furthermore, according to a Decrypt report, David Sacks said in an interview that Trump's personal crypto projects (such as the controversial meme coins) are "unrelated" to the government's policies. When asked if Trump's crypto projects affect industry regulation, he said: "I don't think it has any impact, it's unrelated to the work we're doing here."

When asked about Trump's "personal investment" in crypto assets like Bitcoin, David Sacks said "those are unsubstantiated facts".

Summary

The current state of U.S. crypto regulation is in a delicate stage where it urgently needs to project a leadership image externally, but internally it cannot reach a clear consensus due to political maneuvering. This has created a huge disconnect between the grandiose rhetoric and the substantive policy implementation of this summit. If the government continues to treat crypto policy as a political tool rather than coordinating in-depth with the industry, regulatory agencies, and Congress, the "thunder without rain" scenario is likely to continue, and the policy dividends that can truly bring long-term stability and compliance development to the industry will still be difficult to see.

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