Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve order has reshaped the agenda for the White House Crypto Summit, shifting the conversation to topics like regulation

Trump's first White House Crypto Summit has VIPs pushing for favorable laws

Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve order has reshaped the agenda for the White House Crypto Summit, shifting the conversation to topics like regulation

Now that President Trump has announced plans for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, crypto industry leaders can focus on what else they want to hear from the new administration on Friday.

Just over six weeks into his second White House term, Trump is hosting his first Crypto Summit, a nod to an industry that played a major role in his election victory in November. No executive was more central to that effort than Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Once a Silicon Valley entrepreneur focused on onboarding the world to digital assets, Armstrong has spent the last year transforming himself into crypto's ambassador in Washington, D.C., funneling millions into elections, building alliances, and ensuring the digital currencies market has a seat at the table.

"My goal in attending this is really just, first of all, to thank President Trump for helping make the United States the crypto capital of the world," Armstrong told CNBC ahead of the meeting. "I think he's lived up to that campaign promise so far, and we've seen a lot of work getting done here in a positive way."

Joining Armstrong at Friday's summit, which is being led by White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, will be Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, and Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov, among others. They're planning to discuss digital asset regulation as well as the mechanics of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which Trump announced late Thursday by way of executive order.

Armstrong, whose company helped the crypto sector raise and direct $250 million into the 2024 election cycle, outpacing Wall Street banks and the oil industry, has been instrumental in shaping the new administration's approach to digital assets. Crypto's push to unseat opposition lawmakers and install pro-crypto candidates paid off handsomely, flipping key seats and cementing the sector as a major political force in Washington.

Several million dollars were funneled directly to Trump's campaign and inaugural fund, a sign of just how much was riding on his victory.

At Friday's summit, Armstrong says his top priority will be pushing forward new laws.

"From our point of view, the next step in the United States that's the most urgent is getting legislation passed," he said. He specifically pointed to stablecoin regulation and broader market structure reforms.

Momentum for regulatory clarity is already shifting in crypto's favor. The Senate this week voted, with strong bipartisan support, to overturn two Biden-era regulations that the industry opposed. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, called the wins a gateway for more comprehensive legislation.

Crypto's wish list

For Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, a key issue is how the U.S. can use blockchain technology to maintain its dominance in global finance.

"Really what matters for financial systems is assets," said Nazarov, whose company provides a blockchain-based platform for digital assets. "Does the U.S. generate the largest collection of the best base assets that are then wrapped, rewrapped, and repackaged by others? That's how I define global leadership of a financial system in this new model."

Nazarov said the U.S. must ensure that key financial markets – treasuries, investment funds, and real estate – are tokenized. He sees that as the defining financial shift of the next 50 years, similar to the move from paper-based markets to internet-based financial products.

Robinhood's Tenev has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for tokenization, arguing that blockchain technology can democratize private markets and break down barriers to investment in the world's most valuable companies. In a Washington Post op-ed, he pointed out that companies like OpenAI, SpaceX, and Stripe are worth hundreds of billions of dollars combined but remain inaccessible to everyday investors, with profits concentrated among a small group of insiders.

"Crypto technology can unlock new ways to trade and invest in all assets, from digital to real-world," he told CNBC ahead of the event. "Tokenization will transform investing, but we need regulatory clarity to make it happen."

Under current SEC rules, only accredited investors, people with over $1 million in net worth or $200,000 in annual income, can participate in private markets. Tenev says that reforming these outdated rules and creating a security token registration framework would level the playing field for retail investors, giving them access to high-growth opportunities that have long been reserved for venture capitalists.

Prior to Thursday's executive order, the big debate in the industry was what kind of strategic reserve Trump would propose. The announcement ends speculation over whether the reserve would include multiple cryptocurrencies. While Trump's initial post on Truth Social named five tokens — bitcoin, ether, XRP, Solana's SOL token and Cardano's ADA coin — the final order limits the reserve to bitcoin.

SOL, ether and bitcoin all fell around 5% late Thursday, while ADA plunged nearly 12%.

The order marks the U.S. government's first formal recognition of bitcoin as a strategic asset. The reserve will be funded exclusively through bitcoin seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases, ensuring taxpayers bear no financial burden.

Non-bitcoin assets will be placed in a separate Digital Asset Stockpile managed by the Treasury Department.

Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures said the decision cements bitcoin's status as a global asset, "somewhere in the realm of gold."

Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley, who will also be at Friday's summit, called the development "a huge moment for both crypto and American leadership on the global stage."

"By holding bitcoin and other digital assets for the long term, the White House is taking a future-forward approach to bolstering American economic competitiveness — not just for the decade ahead, but for the next century," said McCauley.

The bitcoin audit

For David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc. and one of the key figures credited with influencing Trump's embrace of bitcoin, the priority is understanding the size of the country's bitcoin ownership.

"One is to figure out how much bitcoin America holds, and what we can do as an industry to help the government secure it," he said.

The Treasury Department must now conduct a full audit of the government's holdings, estimated at 200,000 bitcoin. Sacks confirmed that the government will not sell any bitcoin from the reserve, positioning it as a permanent store of value.

Bailey, who convinced Trump to keynote the biggest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville in July, is also pushing for bitcoin-backed Treasury bonds, arguing that integrating bitcoin into the U.S. debt system could strengthen the country's balance sheet and attract more buyers.

"If we mix bitcoin reserves with U.S. bonds, we could create significant demand by giving investors exposure to bitcoin's performance," he said.

Armstrong told CNBC that Coinbase would "absolutely" step up to be a crypto custodian for the government in the context of a national reserve, adding that the company already works with various parts of the government on crypto custody and trading.

"We're always happy to continue doing that," Armstrong said.

Ryan Gilbert, a fintech investor, said the reserve will send a strong message to institutions that bitcoin is here to stay.

"We're also seeing that this is going to be the mirror image of a lot of corporations that have looked at their treasuries and started to invest in bitcoin," he said, pointing to Saylor and Strategy as early adopters. "I think this will spark a whole new wave of confidence in the asset, both from corporations and the U.S. government."

Saylor's company has amassed a roughly $43 billion stash of bitcoin, accounting for almost all of its market cap.

"I think this executive order is well considered and auspicious for the United States, the crypto industry, and bitcoin," Saylor told CNBC.

The move faces some pressure from Democrats. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, sent a letter to Sacks ahead of the meeting, raising conflict-of-interest concerns and questioning whether Sacks had advance knowledge of Trump's Truth Social post that initially floated a multi-coin strategic reserve.

Warren called on Sacks to disclose any financial holdings in bitcoin, ether, solana, and other assets included in the reserve, noting that his firm, Craft Ventures, was heavily invested in these tokens through Bitwise as of Jan. 1. She also pressed for public disclosure of his government ethics filings, which, as an unpaid special government employee, he has to file but isn't required to make public.

Sacks said this week on X that he sold "all my cryptocurrency and my crypto-focused funds" before joining the administration.

After the summit, many of the attendees will regroup at an off-the-record event hosted by Coinbase, along with invited members of the administration. Armstrong is gearing up to play the long game.

"The fight for crypto here is more urgent than ever," Armstrong said."If the U.S. leads on this front, I think the rest of the G20 could be pretty inspired by it, and that has a lot of domino effects downstream."

WATCH:Bitcoin gives back gains after Trump's proposed strategic crypto reserve

This story originally appeared on: CNBC - Author:MacKenzie Sigalos