March 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump, who has a financial stake in cryptocurrencies, brought crypto founders and investors to the White House Friday for what’s billed as the first-ever “crypto summit.”
Friday’s event, the first of its kind and which was led by White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, attracted a list of who’s who among cryptocurrency company leaders who gathered to discuss digital asset issues and regulation.
Trump’s embrace of crypto is a dramatic departure from how other presidential administrations have dealt with emergent cyber currency. As a candidate, Trump got financial support from many crypto companies.
The so-called summit comes as Trump holds a stake in crypto company World Liberty Financial, and it’s happening against the backdrop of the administration dropping cases against crypto companies and other corporations across several agencies.
The cases being paused or dropped include accusations of foreign bribery, safety violations, unfair labor practices and environmental crimes.
Sacks pointed out how Friday’s event follows Trump’s creation of a cryptocurrency strategic reserve. An executive order creating the crypto reserve — the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — was signed Thursday in the Oval Office and it will be seeded with an estimated 200,000 bitcoins seized in court proceedings.
Sacks called it a “digital Fort Knox.”
Trump’s White House event is an overture to the industry that was a substantial contributor to his 2024 campaign and played a major role in his election win.
But the event also comes as more attention is being focused on that relationship between the industry and the president, as well as high-profile global cases of cryptocurrency fraud.
In a March 4 report, the watchdog group Public Citizen said that the Trump administration “has already halted or moved to dismiss enforcement investigations and cases against 89 corporations” including seven crypto companies.
Beneficiaries of dropped cases include billionaire tech executives from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sam Altman ad others, according to Public Citizen.
Public Citizen said in a statement, “After freeing January 6 rioters, Donald Trump’s second administration is rapidly moving toward a new priority: granting ‘get out of jail free’ cards to corporations facing investigations and federal lawsuits over corporate misconduct. Trump’s administration is rapidly moving to halt and hinder federal investigations and cases against alleged corporate lawbreaking.”
Among the cases Trump’s administration has dropped are SEC investigations and lawsuits against Trump contributors Robinhood Crypto and Coinbase.
Cryptocurrency criminal issues are a global concern, and there have been major crypto fraud cases and some led to collapse of crypto companies.
The cases include alleged South Korean crypto fraudster Do Kwon, who was extradited to the United States in January to face federal criminal charges in the $40 billion collapse of TerraUSD.
In May 2024, Gemini crypto exchange was forced by New York Attorney General Letitia James to return $2.18 billion to defrauded users.
In November 2023, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of all charges in the multi-billion dollar fraud collapse of crypto exchange FTX.