Sit under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, more than two dozens of the most powerful figures in the US cryptocurrency sector, together for many billion dollars, gathered at the White House on Friday for an audience with President Trump.
When Mr. Trump entered the dining room of the state decorated after a short wait, the managers got up to applaud.
“Many of you have fought for years for this,” Trump said while the room calmed down. “It’s an honor to be with you in the White House.”
Trump held a “crypto summit” in his hand, face to face with the leaders of practically all the best cryptocurrency companies in the United States. Only a small part of the gathering, which was to last four hours, was transmitted to the public. But he offered a vivid illustration of the recent hug of Crypto by Mr. Trump, an alive industry that has spent years fighting with US regulators.
Numerous managers, including Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the founders of the exchange of cryptocurrencies Gemini, offered words of gratitude to Mr. Trump. They called him “wonderful”, saying they were “very happy” with his approach.
“High Qi individuals around this table,” Trump replied.
Since it came into office, Trump has orchestrated a complete transformation of federal policy on cryptocurrency. The Securities and Exchange Commission has almost completely reversed an aggressive campaign by the Biden administration to repress the sector. The agency, moving with a surprising speed, issued a legal guide to help the crypto companies, concluded the investigations on the main companies and dropped legal actions against two of the largest exchanges, Coinbase and Kraken.
The leaders of both these companies participated in the event of the White House on Friday. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, sat two seats from the president.
“He indicates that industry is finally a serious sector,” said JP Richardson, who manages the cryptocurrency company Exodus and flew to Washington to participate in the top of Mr. Trump. “We believe that technology can basically change the world. And having this administration actually taking seriously is really important. “
The meeting was also a reminder of the personal investment of Trump in Crypto, which ethics experts described as a conflict of alarming interest. The guest list included Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, a dear friend of the president who acts as a special envoy of the administration in the Middle East. The young Mr. Witkoff is a founder of World Liberty Financial, a cryptographic company that Trump has heavily promoted last year – and from which he and his family profiles directly.
Once a cryptographic skeptic, Trump embraced digital currencies on the countryside track last year, since the cryptocurrencies spent tens of millions of dollars to support it and congress candidates who supported technology.
Soon, Mr. Trump entered the market itself. Last autumn, he and his children worked with Witkoffs to start World Liberty Financial, promoting him as a platform to borrow and loans in cryptocurrency. World Liberty has its own digital currency, WLFI, and the Trump family receives a sales cut.
A few days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump also started selling a so -called memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency linked to a joke on the internet or a mascot of celebrity. The coin, called $ Trump, briefly increased and then crashed, costing investors $ 2 billion of dollars.
Since he won the elections, Trump has taken measures to increase the perspectives of the sector, appointing the supporters of cryptocurrencies to the best administrative places and asking federal agencies to develop a new approach to regulation.
Thursday evening, he signed an executive order to create a national reserve of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The managers of the cryptocurrencies launched the plan as a strategy to clarify national debt.
The skeptics attacked the proposal as a scheme to enrich a small number of cryptographic investors. Some of the supporters of Mr. Trump in the world of technology have also joined the criticisms.
After Trump made fun of the reserve announcement on social media last weekend, Joe Lonsdale, an important technological investor, wrote on X that the government should not waste money in “encryption patterns”.
None of that dissent was on display at the top. The meeting was friendly, said Sergey Nazarov, founder of the Crypto Company Chainlink, who participated in the event. One by one, the managers shared their opinions on cryptographic policy, with little time for the debate or disagreement.
“This was not a meeting in which things were decided or disseminated,” Nazarov said. “This was more a type of collaborative brainstorming session.”
In the public part of the summit, Trump sat between David Sacks, the encryption tsar of the White House, and Scott Beesent, the Treasury Secretary. Trump greeted the event as a turning point in the treatment of the nation of the cryptocurrency industry.
“I promised to make America Bitcoin superpower in the world and the cryptographic capital of the planet,” he said. “We are taking historical actions to keep that promise.”
He said that the new National Bitcoin escort would create a virtual Fort Knox for the investments of the nation. “Never sell your bitcoin,” said Trump.
In his observations, Mr. Sacks praised Mr. Trump’s leadership, saying that the administration was “moving at the speed of technology”. The industry had been subject to “judicial proceedings and persecution” under the Biden administration, he said.
“Nobody knows what it seems better than you,” Sacks said to the president.
Then he turned to the twins from Winklevoss, sitting on the other side of the room.
“You said something before I thought it was really deep,” Signor Sacks told them. “A year ago, you thought it would be more likely that you would end up in prison than to the White House.”