President Donald Trump wants to make the U.S. the ‘crypto capital of the world,’ and a top White House cryptocurrency policy official said that the administration is well on its way to ushering in ‘the golden age for digital assets.’
Bo Hines, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, sat for an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital this week to outline the Trump administration’s work thus far in the cryptocurrency space.
Cryptocurrency, or ‘crypto’ for short, is a digital currency in which transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralized system using cryptography that enables secure online payments for individuals or businesses.
‘The president has made this a priority, and it is a testament to his leadership and his knowledge in the space,’ Hines explained. ‘Unlike any president before him, he has truly embraced this technological development in a way that no one else has, which has allowed us to do what we need to do to make the United States the crypto capital of the world.’
Hines told Fox News Digital that officials have focused on ‘clearing the deck’ and ensuring that ‘what was happening under the Biden regulatory regime has been rescinded and repealed.’
Under the Biden administration, Hines said Americans using cryptocurrency went ‘offshore due to the nature of attacks they specifically received under the Biden regime.’
‘We will start seeing a lot of those players come back to the United States in short order because, look, we are the greatest country in the world. People want to innovate here. People want to build here. And this space is no different,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day, the largest players to the smallest players want to be operating in the United States—they just need a clear set of rules to abide by to do so.’
Hines said that under the Biden administration, ‘rather than welcoming in innovation and encouraging technological developments, they went after these people.’
‘We’ve been in the demolition phase—removing a lot of those barriers that the Biden regime put up so that people can actually start building back here in the United States.’
‘My main message to players in the crypto space has been—welcome home,’ Hines said. ‘We are going to create the most pro-crypto-friendly regulatory environment that anyone could possibly imagine because we understand how important the innovation is here in this space.’
Hines explained that during the first week of the second Trump administration, the president set up the interagency working group—the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets—which includes officials from the Treasury Department, the SEC, CFTC, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and more.
Trump’s executive order directed the working group to explore several digital asset-related issues, including looking into the ‘potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile’ and proposing ‘criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.’
‘With this group and other White House offices, we are working on delivering on the president’s promise to clear the deck and have all of these burdens and regulations lifted,’ Hines said.
The group is currently in the process of compiling recommendations and building a comprehensive report they will deliver to the president later this year. The report is designed to explain the ‘clearest regulatory environment possible’ in the space, and recommendations for how the U.S. maintains its role as ‘the dominant leader in the space across the globe.’
As for legislation, Hines pointed to the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or the STABLE Act. That legislation, which passed out of the House Financial Services Committee on a bipartisan vote, establishes framework for the issuance and operation of dollar-denominated payment stablecoins in the U.S.
‘I think the Stable Coin legislation could be the first really, truly large and meaningful piece of legislation that the president signs in the first year of a second term,’ Hines said, noting it would ‘truly revolutionize the financial system for years to come.’
‘I think that Americans will see that once this legislation is through—once this regulatory framework is established—the way in which they move their money will be changed forever,’ Hines said. ‘You will see that Americans will have better access to quicker payments and better access to transparency.’