Trump’s White House crypto summit does little to impress investors

The White House crypto summit on Friday was supposed to be a turning point for crypto investors, but it barely made a dent. Self-proclaimed ‘crypto president’ Donald Trump invited top executives from major crypto companies to discuss his administration’s plan to roll back the regulatory crackdown imposed under Biden.

Instead of getting the green light for real government backing, attendees were left with vague commitments and a market that dropped instead of rallying. By late afternoon, Bitcoin had already fallen 3%, sitting at $87,000, and by the end of the week, it was down 7%.

Meanwhile as of press time Sunday, crypto markets have erased over $100 billion of total market cap this morning as Bitcoin falls below $83,000. Is liquidity drying up?

Strategic bitcoin reserve turns out to be old news

On Thursday night, David Sacks, Trump’s “crypto czar”, made what sounded like a major announcement: Trump had signed an executive order to create a strategic bitcoin reserve.

Investors immediately jumped on the news, thinking the government was about to buy up Bitcoin and inject real demand into the market. But once the details came, the excitement collapsed.

The reserve wasn’t for new Bitcoin purchases. It was just a repackaging of Bitcoin the government already had—coins seized by law enforcement in criminal cases. No new investments, no additional funding, no timeline for future buys.

A separate “digital asset stockpile” would be created for Ethereum, Ripple, and other seized tokens, but again, no government investment was involved.

The order also said that if the government ever did decide to buy more Bitcoin, it would have to be budget-neutral, meaning it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime, which effectively ruled out any large-scale acquisitions.

Jeff Park, an executive at Bitwise, said, “We asked for too little. Having only Bitcoin and not the rest of the altcoins in the strategic reserve is not a win. ‘Exploring’ or ‘studying’ concepts is not a win. ‘Not selling’ is not a win. None of these things at the core require an EO at all to do anything.”

Trump’s promises leave investors wanting more

Trump used the summit to push his vision of making the US “the crypto capital of the world”, but investors wanted more than just words. The White House tried to frame the reserve as a “digital Fort Knox for digital gold”, saying it would allow the government to hold onto its Bitcoin instead of dumping it at random.

Sacks argued that in the past, the government’s ad hoc sell-offs had cost taxpayers money, since Bitcoin’s price had risen after those sales.

There was also widespread confusion after Trump’s social media post announcing the reserve. He had mentioned three non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies as “founding tokens,” which many took as a signal that they would get official government recognition. That wasn’t the case.

White House officials later clarified that those coins were simply part of past enforcement seizures. Adding to the frustration, Trump also shut down rumors that the government might eliminate capital gains taxes on crypto.

That speculation had been rampant in online crypto spaces, and would’ve done a lot for the market, but Trump wasn’t about that.

The industry played a huge role in the 2024 election, with crypto PACs and affiliated groups pouring in over $245 million. Nearly half of all corporate political donations came from crypto companies, according to Public Citizen.

That money helped fuel a Republican victory, and many in the industry believed it would lead to major policy wins. But for now, they’re getting friendlier rhetoric from the government, but not much else. The regulatory pressure from the Biden years is easing, but investors were hoping for real action—something to push the market forward.

Trump’s own involvement in crypto has been unpredictable. Before taking office, he launched his own meme coin, briefly adding billions to his net worth on paper before the price collapsed. Now, as president, he’s promising to support crypto, but the summit showed that talk is cheap.

Trump said Friday his administration would “end the federal bureaucracy’s war on crypto.” “We feel like pioneers,” Trump said.

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