From skeptic to champion, President Donald Trump is reshaping the nation’s digital asset agenda from the ground up, pleasing die-hard bitcoin and meme coin investors and ruffling the feathers of enforcement hawks who think he’s engaging in flagrant self-dealing.
He once warned that cryptocurrencies “seemed like a scam” and were “based on thin air” and accused them of enabling criminal activity. Today, Trump says he’s been a “big crypto fan” from the beginning and is overseeing the most sweeping deregulatory shift in digital asset policy the United States has ever seen.
“The shift has been dramatic. Under former President Joe Biden, the Securities and Exchange Commission leaned into aggressive enforcement without regulatory clarity. Under Trump, we’re seeing a pivot toward pragmatism — fewer blanket accusations, more targeted fraud actions, and a clearer willingness to work with industry,” Mike Cahill, CEO of Web3 company Douro Labs, told the Washington Examiner.
Trump’s rapid evolution, from cautious critic to full-throated crypto evangelist, is more than a personal pivot, experts told the Washington Examiner. It marks a sharp departure from the Biden administration’s crackdown era and signals a new chapter in the government’s approach to blockchain innovation, financial technology, and regulatory authority.
From Gary Gensler to Paul Atkins: A clean break at the SEC
Under Biden, then-SEC Chairman Gary Gensler led a broad enforcement campaign against the digital asset industry. Gensler repeatedly asserted that most cryptocurrencies were securities, and he treated them as such, launching lawsuits and investigations that choked off access and chilled innovation.
“Chairman Gensler never met a crypto he didn’t think was a security,” said Michael Lowe, a partner at Troutman Pepper Locke and former federal prosecutor. “Biden’s SEC had no interest in guidance — it was all about enforcement.”
That enforcement-first era ended in January. Trump replaced Gensler’s regime with one focused on clarity, not punishment.
Eric Schiffer, chairman of the Los Angeles-based private equity firm Patriarch Organization, among other firms, compared the Gensler era to “tanks on the lawn” of the industry.
“Yesterday, the SEC parked tanks on crypto’s lawn; today, it’s handing out lemonade and term-sheet brochures. We’ve gone from catapults over the moat to guided castle tours,” Schiffer said.
After the recent confirmation of SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, he launched a Crypto Task Force to develop a framework that distinguishes between securities and commodities — a critical dividing line in how digital assets are regulated.
“There hasn’t really been any kind of approach up until now to really get some guidance on what digital asset specifically is a security and what digital asset specifically is a commodity,” Lowe said.
Lowe noted that if a digital asset is classified as a commodity, then it is regulated under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. And if it’s a security, that will fall under the SEC.
“So right now, the Trump administration is actually interested in providing that guidance,” Lowe said.
Trump’s DOJ: No more criminalizing confusion
The Department of Justice has also turned a corner.
In April, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a directive pausing prosecutions based on unsettled legal theories around crypto. The memo declared the DOJ would defer to federal agencies to set rules — and only enforce those rules once defined.
“The Justice Department will no longer pursue litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets while President Trump’s actual regulators do this work outside the punitive criminal justice framework,” according to the text of the memo.
Lowe, a former fraud prosecutor, said he “was involved in crypto fraud prosecutions, and really, what I found was that most crypto fraud prosecutions are really just fraud prosecutions.”
Last week, the administration demonstrated it is still taking crypto fraud seriously in a prosecution announced by recently installed acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.
On Friday, Pirro announced the federal seizure of more than $800,000 in alleged proceeds of a “Cryptocurrency Confidence Scheme” in which criminals allegedly contacted victims through seemingly “misdirected text messages,” dating apps, or professional meetups and investment groups. She also said the United States recovered nearly $2.5 million in cryptocurrency involved in “fraudulent confidence schemes.”
“Whether they are in our district’s streets or hiding behind a computer screen abroad, the United States will continue to hold fraudsters and grifters responsible, seize money they scam from hardworking Americans, and use our authority to compensate victims,” Pirro said.
Trump ‘dropping the guilt-by-issuance mentality’
Jeff Ifrah, a veteran gaming and crypto lawyer, said the administration is shedding a central legal theory from the Biden years: that simply launching a token could constitute a regulatory violation.
“They’re abandoning the notion that the issuance of a crypto digital token is the functional equivalent of a regulatory offense,” Ifrah said. “That was a Biden-era theory, and even if courts still uphold some of it, this administration wants to replace it through regulation and legislation.”
Congress is now stepping in with bipartisan momentum.
Lawmakers in both chambers are advancing bills such as the GENIUS Act and the STABLE Act, aimed at defining stablecoins and clarifying disclosure rules. A broader market structure bill, backed by House Republicans, proposes a classification system for all digital assets.
From campaign promise to policy engine
The speed of Trump’s transformation has surprised some observers — but not those closest to him. In early 2024, crypto fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago and Silicon Valley began drawing in major donors and attention. Soon after, Trump spoke at a major industry conference in Nashville, pledging to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet.”
Since then, crypto has become part of the Trump brand. His administration has launched a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, banned federal development of a central bank digital currency, and has even partaken in digital trading cards reminiscent of the NFT craze while launching his own $TRUMP meme token on the Solana blockchain just before retaking the Oval Office.
His Cabinet is also stacked with members who are equally as supportive of the digital market. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy even admitted in 2023, “I’m bullish on bitcoin. I don’t have faith in the dollar.”
$TRUMP Coin dinner sees mixed responses
Still, Trump’s embrace hasn’t come without criticism. A private dinner held earlier this week for top investors in the $TRUMP meme coin drew scrutiny from ethics watchdogs.
Though the coin is traded openly and does not directly fund Trump due to his children managing his assets, critics raised concerns about access, noting that attendees included foreign nationals such as crypto billionaire Justin Sun.
“Anyone who was worried about a president’s son selling art should be able to see the ethics concerns of foreign interests donating through a meme coin,” GOP strategist Doug Heye previously told the Washington Examiner, referencing Hunter Biden’s auctioning off paintings.
But attendees and White House officials say the access concerns are overblown. According to one guest who spoke to NBC News, Trump arrived via helicopter, gave a 15-minute speech on bitcoin and sovereignty, and left without taking photos or mingling.
“He helicoptered in, he helicoptered out,” the guest said. “We didn’t really get to shake hands with him or anything. It’s about what I expected.”
The White House called the dinner “a personal event” and stressed that the president was complying with all applicable ethics laws.
Still, some crypto experts favorable of the Trump-era measures of enforcement understand the implications for promoting risky assets such as Trump’s meme coin, which rose nearly 1,000% of its initial starting value when it launched on Jan. 17, only to tank 500% by Jan. 20, the day of the inauguration, and continued to slip even lower.
“Memecoins are the most volatile part of the crypto market with no intrinsic value,” said Nic Puckrin, an ex-Goldman Sachs analyst who runs a digital asset education portal called The Coin Bureau. “They’re worse than penny stocks, and most of them eventually lose 99% of their value. Encouraging investors to own meme coins is a major policy error and risks political repercussions.”
From regulation by fear to regulation by framework
In the Trump administration’s telling through actions, crypto doesn’t need to be feared — it needs to be understood. The new approach, experts say, emphasizes rulemaking over intimidation and seeks to restore the balance between innovation and oversight.
TRUMP MEME COIN DINNER SERVES UP ETHICS COMPLAINTS OVER FOREIGN INFLUENCE
“Most crypto fraud prosecutions are just fraud prosecutions,” Lowe said. “You don’t need novel theories to go after scammers — you need clear rules. That’s what this administration is trying to build.”
Whether this era of clarity delivers the long-awaited stability the industry craves remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Crypto has never had a more enthusiastic or more powerful friend in power.