Trump's executive order blitz gave crypto almost everything it wanted — except a Bitcoin reserve
Jan 28, 2025
Key Points
- Trump's executive orders delivered most crypto priorities, including banking access and AI mandate revocation, but stopped short of establishing a national Bitcoin reserve, only promising to evaluate the idea.
- The White House tasked advisors David Sacks and Michael Kratsios with a 180-day plan to develop AI systems free from ideological bias, leaving substantial room for interpretation as Chinese competitive pressure mounts.
- Many tech-adjacent orders contain 90-180 day implementation windows, giving the administration flexibility to move quickly but leaving the industry uncertain which promises will become actual policy.
Summary
Trump's flurry of executive orders in his first week delivered most of what the crypto industry wanted, but notably withheld one marquee prize: a federal Bitcoin reserve.
The orders touching crypto included a directive ensuring that crypto companies would have access to banking services—a priority the industry had flagged as essential. Trump also revoked the Biden administration's AI mandate that had drawn opposition from startup leaders and investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Databricks. TikTok secured the biggest immediate win: a 75-day reprieve from legislation that briefly forced the platform offline.
On AI specifically, Trump signed his own order three days after revoking Biden's, tasking White House advisors David Sacks and Michael Kratsios with a 180-day plan to "develop AI systems free from ideological bias" and sustain American dominance. The language is broad—deliberately so—and leaves substantial room for interpretation. The timing matters: with DeepSeek's emergence signaling Chinese competitive pressure, the 180-day window gives the White House half a year to clarify strategy before any meaningful policy framework could take effect.
The Bitcoin reserve omission is the telling constraint. Crypto's leadership framed most of the orders as promise-kept. The CEO of Crypto.com posted that Trump had delivered on the industry's core demands. But the executive order on digital assets stopped short of establishing a national Bitcoin reserve, saying instead that the idea should merely be "evaluated." For an administration that has leaned heavily on crypto-friendly rhetoric and personnel, the gap between rhetoric and commitment is notable.
Energy and data center regulation remains another open question. Some AI executives are optimistic that Trump will ease environmental rules and clear a path for the compute-intensive infrastructure projects like Stargate, but the orders signed so far contain no explicit directive to that effect. The vagueness is partly structural: many tech-adjacent orders are preliminary, leaving 90-180 day windows for advisors to draft implementation details. That flexibility cuts both ways—it lets the White House move quickly on priorities, but also leaves the industry uncertain which promises will translate into actual policy.