Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
In the early hours of March 8, 2025, the White House held its first Crypto Summit.
Trump repeated the executive order he had previously signed on Crypto Asset Reserves at the summit, and said the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce would explore new ways to accumulate more Bit, provided that taxpayers do not have to pay any cost. He ordered federal agencies to take stock of the Crypto Assets currently held by the U.S. government and determine how to transfer them to the Treasury, 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 Asset 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
As the meeting was a closed-door session and not live-streamed, in the limited public footage available, the participants of the White House Crypto Summit took turns speaking, mostly praising the progress in the Crypto sector under Trump's administration and Trump himself.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Basent discussed establishing a strategic Bit reserve and Crypto Asset inventory, "regulation of Crypto Assets," and a federal framework for Stablecoins, and stated that the Treasury Department will work closely with the IRS and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to "revoke and modify" guidelines that have previously harmed the ability of Crypto Asset companies to operate in the U.S.
Trump stated that 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 providing a grand blueprint. However, the real policy details behind these grandiose statements remain vague, especially in terms of a timeline or implementation path for Stablecoin legislation, banking compliance access, and Crypto Asset taxation.
But for the market, the most important expectation from 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 the corresponding legislative, regulatory, and enforcement details, the policy dividends that the market expects will still remain on paper.
In other words, after repeatedly touting the "pro-Crypto" policy slogan, the key for the market is whether substantive measures can be actually implemented. 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, based on the information released so far, the summit's results are more focused on political rhetoric, lacking the substantive content to further drive policy implementation.
Therefore, this first White House Crypto Summit, despite gathering many bigwigs and regulatory heavyweights, still presents an overall situation of "performance over substance." Trump's pro-Crypto attitude is more a political maneuver, boldly and enthusiastically demonstrating support in rhetoric, but able to avoid or delay the key regulatory issues that truly impact the industry's prospects. The passionate remarks of the many participants are mostly just flattering or echoing Trump's political tone, which actually ends up obscuring the key issues of compliance, taxation, and market order that need to be discussed.
In other words, while the summit "thundered loudly," it was more of a political statement or political show, using the summit to create a media buzz, far from truly shaping the Crypto regulatory landscape.
ADA, SOL, XRP Mentioned Only Due to Top 5 Market Cap
Interestingly, according to the White House announcement, Trump's executive order includes two parts: strategic reserves and inventories of Crypto Assets. The strategic reserve 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 Bit, possibly XRP, ADA, ETH and SOL (as announced by the President last weekend), and potentially other assets. The main difference between the reserve and the inventory 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 potentially selling assets from the U.S. digital asset inventory.
In a pre-summit interview with Bloomberg, Crypto czar David Sacks, when asked whether ADA, SOL, and XRP will be included in the U.S. Crypto currency reserve and why the President mentioned them, responded: "Well, the President mentioned the top 5 Crypto currencies by market cap. So I think people are reading a little too much into it. He just mentioned the top 5 that we actually hold."
He emphasized, "Let me say again, we need to do an accounting (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 Bit. I believe the government also owns some ETH. As for the others, I'm not too sure. That's why we need to do an accounting. Frankly, no one has been able to give a definitive answer on what assets the federal government owns. The reason for this part of the problem is that we never had 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 about this, no one has even talked to us about this."
This shows that the U.S. government's concepts of Crypto strategic reserves and Crypto asset inventories are more at the stage of an unformed policy idea and media rhetoric. The government's actual holdings of these Altcoins, management strategies, and even whether they will be included in the strategic reserve itself, all lack clear official accounting and regulatory plans. The government's claim to own the top 5 market cap assets is more like a vague external statement, and may just be an example-style mention in political rhetoric.
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 a detailed institutional arrangement for the current holdings and future purchase plans. David Sacks also acknowledged that the scale of Altcoin holdings still needs to be audited and sorted out, and the compliance and accounting systems between various departments within the government and between the federal and state governments are not fully prepared to accommodate such assets. This has led to an awkward situation where the government has loudly proclaimed its layout of crypto assets, but the market has found a lack of substantial 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 both fell around 7%.
In addition, 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 whether Trump's crypto currency projects would 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 such as Bit, David Sacks said "these are facts without evidence".
Summary
The current state of crypto regulation in the United States is in a delicate stage, where it urgently needs to take the lead externally, but internally it is unable to reach a clear consensus due to political games. This has created a huge gap 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 authorities, and Congress, the "loud thunder and light 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.
