Blockchain Legal Resource

On January 23, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order on “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.” Noting that the “digital asset industry plays a crucial role in innovation and economic development in the United States,” the executive order provides a framework for the new administration’s approach to the cryptocurrency sector.

The executive order begins by laying out a series of goals and objectives for the federal government’s oversight of digital assets:

• protecting and promoting the ability of individual citizens and private-sector entities alike to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution, including the ability to develop and deploy software, to participate in mining and validating, to transact with other persons without unlawful censorship and to maintain self-custody of digital assets;
• promoting and protecting the sovereignty of the United States dollar, including through actions to promote the development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide;
• protecting and promoting fair and open access to banking services for all law-abiding individual citizens and private-sector entities alike;
• providing regulatory clarity and certainty built on technology-neutral regulations, frameworks that account for emerging technologies, transparent decision making, and well-defined jurisdictional regulatory boundaries, all of which are essential to supporting a vibrant and inclusive digital economy and innovation in digital assets, permissionless blockchains and distributed ledger technologies; and
• taking measures to protect Americans from the risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which threaten the stability of the financial system, individual privacy and the sovereignty of the United States, including by prohibiting the establishment, issuance, circulation and use of a CBDC within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Next, the executive order revokes President Biden’s executive order on digital assets, and it orders the Secretary of the Treasury to revoke the Department of the Treasury’s Framework for International Engagement on Digital Assets.

The executive order also establishes a Working Group on Digital Asset Markets within the National Economic Council with representatives from key government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As appropriate, the working group is encouraged to hold public hearings and receive individual expertise from leaders in digital assets and digital markets. The working group is tasked specifically with the following:

• Within 30 days of the date of the executive order, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other relevant agencies, are required to identify all regulations, guidance documents, orders or other items that affect the digital asset sector. Within 60 days of the date of the executive order, each agency must submit to the Chair of the working group recommendations with respect to whether each identified regulation, guidance document, order or other item should be rescinded or modified, or, for items other than regulations, adopted in a regulation.
• Within 180 days of the date of the order, the working group must submit a report to the President, including recommended regulatory and legislative proposals that advance the policies established in the executive order. In particular, the report must focus on:

(i) developing a federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets, including stablecoins, in the United States, giving due consideration to provisions for market structure, oversight, consumer protection, and risk management; and

(ii) evaluating the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile and propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the federal government through its law enforcement efforts.

Notably, the executive order prohibits agencies from undertaking any action to establish, issue or promote central bank digital currencies, and any current plans to do so must be terminated immediately.