Executive Order on Digital Assets and Financial Technology Is a Great Start
Ever since the November election, it appeared the new Trump administration would take a decidedly pro-crypto stance. The president’s January 23 executive order on digital assets seems to confirm it.
The order’s goal is to “promote United States leadership in digital assets and financial technology while protecting economic liberty.” Nothing wrong with that.
Perhaps most encouraging is that the administration now has an explicit goal to protect and promote “the ability of individual citizens and private-sector entities alike to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution.” For context, that goal includes “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.”
It remains to be seen exactly how this plays out, but these explicit statements represent a huge positive change. They look very much like a 180-degree reversal in the executive branch’s view toward crypto, and it’s very hard not to take that as a good sign.
Another good sign is that the order uses the same definition for blockchain that the US House of Representatives used in the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act. That language identifies a required attribute of the blockchain as being “composed of source code that is publicly available.” That language suggests a move toward promoting open and permissionless blockchains, and that’s a good sign too.
The order also takes a stance on prohibiting a central bank digital currency, and that’s a great sign.
Finally, the order establishes a working group to help with all the heavy lifting that still needs to be done. The working group will make recommendations for regulatory and legislative proposals for digital assets, including stablecoins. And the working group does not include any of the banking agencies, where some of the strongest resistance to innovation through financial technology has resided.
There’s a long way to go, but this executive order is a great start for the new administration.