By Nandita Bose, Suzanne McGee and Michelle Conlin
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump wooed the cryptocurrency industry’s elite at the White House on Friday, hosting a first-of-its-kind summit focused on his plans for a government-owned stockpile of digital assets.
Trump welcomed a wide range of industry players including Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of the president’s own crypto business, World Liberty Financial, his social media posts showed.
In addition to top administration officials and lawmakers, guests in the White House’s State Dining Room included MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and entrepreneur David Bailey.
A major focus of the event was Trump’s goal to build a strategic reserve containing bitcoin, which he formalized in an executive order on Thursday that also said there would be a stockpile of other digital assets.
That order directed the secretaries of Treasury and Commerce to develop “budget-neutral strategies” for acquiring additional bitcoin that have no “incremental costs” on taxpayers.
“We don’t want any cost to the taxpayers,” Trump said at the summit.
The reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, White House crypto czar David Sacks said in a post on social media platform X.
Sacks told reporters at the White House that establishing a bitcoin reserve should have been done a long time ago. He said taxpayer funds would not be used to acquire digital assets and that there were existing protections in place to safeguard consumers from crypto investments.
The plans disappointed some in the market who had hoped for a firm plan to buy new tokens. The announcement weighed on the price of bitcoin, last down 3.4% at $86,394.
“This (strategic reserve) is going to be the biggest point of contention for many of us,” said JP Richardson, co-founder and CEO of Exodus, a bitcoin wallet developer. Although he owns the four coins other than bitcoin that Trump has suggested including in the reserve, he does not think they have a place in a strategic reserve.
“Crypto has made big strides, but it’s still a relatively nascent industry,” Richardson said. Other coins are smaller and function in a very different way, one he said may create more risk.
Officials invited to the summit praised Trump and executives for clearing the way for the industry’s growth. Other industry executives said it was good to see the administration being collaborative with the industry after years in which some felt they were under attack over security and consumer protection issues.
“For the first time, industry leaders feel they’re walking into a collaborative discussion,” said Les Borsai, co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, a crypto investment adviser, who said he did not receive an invitation.
Trump was upbeat about the crypto industry’s prospects, telling the summit, “We feel like pioneers in a way.”
He added: “From this day on, America will follow the rule that every bitcoin knows very well, never sell your bitcoin. That’s a little phrase that they have. I don’t know if that’s right or not. Who the hell knows, right? Who knows? Who knows, but so far, it’s been right, and well, let’s keep it that way.”
Trump’s executive order spells out that the government’s own bitcoin holdings should never be sold.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the event the U.S. was going to keep the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and use stablecoins to do that.
In a post on X, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of technology company Ripple, who attended the summit, said he welcomed Trump’s recognition that the world of cryptocurrencies stretched beyond bitcoin. XRP, the coin tied to Ripple, is one of the four other cryptocurrencies Trump has suggested may be added to a crypto reserve.
Attendees said they were optimistic about working with an administration that views crypto as a mainstream asset class and expressed hope for a straightforward regulatory process.
“What everyone really needs to have at this point is clarity on what the level of scrutiny and intensity of regulation will be, who the key regulators will be,” said Yesha Yadav, associate dean and professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
That could speed up the process of approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission of a flurry of new listings of exchange-traded funds.
Trump’s family has launched cryptocurrency meme coins and he also holds a stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform, which has sparked some conflict-of-interest concerns.
His aides have said Trump has handed over control of his business ventures, which are being reviewed by outside ethics lawyers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee, Michelle Conlin in New York, Trevor Hunnicutt and Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional reporting by Lisa Pauline Mattackal, Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris, Alexandra Ulmer in Washington and Tommy Reggiori Wilkes in London; Editing by Megan Davies, Jacqueline Wong, Marguerita Choy, Deepa Babington and Nia Williams)
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