The Trump Administration may nix his promised executive council in favor of informal industry summits. This new plan is seen as a way to avoid rife tribalism and infighting within the crypto industry.
Trump has called himself a “crypto president.”
(Shutterstock)
Posted February 12, 2025 at 7:28 pm EST.
The Trump administration may not launch a formal “crypto council” after all. Instead, the White House will likely gather a rotating group of crypto leaders for a series of “summits” on specific crypto policy issues, according to three sources familiar with the decision-making process.
It is unclear how many summits there would be or when they would occur. Initial meetings would likely focus on topics such as banking, payments, data centers, and bitcoin mining. Two sources confirmed that trade associations have been providing input on the different ideas.
Avoiding Conflict Between Industry Supporters
These ad hoc crypto summits are thought by the administration as a way to avoid conflict between warring factions within the crypto industry. A diverse set of policy disagreements have arisen between centralized and decentralized crypto projects, bitcoin maximalists and altcoin executives, those in favor and against integration with traditional finance, and simply individual executives vying for power.
A representative for the Trump administration declined to comment.
Read More: President Trump Declares Crypto a National Priority in Executive Order
Trump Promised A Crypto Council In December
Many industry leaders were working under the assumption that a crypto council would collaborate with this working group in devising crypto policy, referencing a post Trump made on Truth Social in late December suggesting as much. In the post, Trump said that there would be a “presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets (the ‘Crypto Council’), a new advisory group composed of luminaries from the Crypto industry [sic].” Chief executives from Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Ripple are just some of the key leaders who have met with Trump in recent months, according to news reports. Unchained was unable to confirm which executives would be called to participate in the crypto summits if this new plan moves forward.
Trump said that crypto czar David Sacks would chair this council and that Bo Hines, a young politician from North Carolina who tried and failed to win a seat in the House of Representatives in 2024, would serve as executive director.
Though he has kept a low profile since the announcement, Hines has been meeting with politicians and lobbyists on the hill in recent weeks, according to one source directly familiar. Unchained was unable to compile a list of who Hines had met with, but was able to confirm that Hines has been helping the Trump administration weigh alternatives to a crypto council by shopping around alternative ideas in some of his meetings.
Read More: Trump Announces Team Working With AI & Crypto Czar: What We Know
The Impact of Summits On Crypto Policy
Sources who spoke with Unchained were divided on the impact of swapping a crypto council idea for summits on the industry.
One source explained the idea in a way the Trump administration might use to explain it to the general public: a no-brainer way to have America’s brightest minds weigh in on their areas of expertise. “Do you think it would make sense to talk to exchanges about exchange issues and miners about mining issues and wallet providers about self custody, etc?,” they rhetorically asked. Two sources who spoke to Unchained and were not directly familiar with the conversations, but had heard about the summits indirectly, made similar arguments.
Others, however, had a cynical view, seeing the summits as purely a way to avoid conflict. One even went so far as to suggest the summits would not be used for policy, and rather be used as a way for Trump to gather information he could use to make money for himself. The president’s creation of a memecoin, as well as his involvement in his sons’ DeFi project World Liberty Financial, has made some industry leaders sour on Trump’s intentions. One source who has been in communication with the Trump administration called his recent business endeavors in crypto “an embarrassment.”
