President Trump on Thursday issued an executive order to support the growth of the cryptocurrency industry, calling for a new plan to regulate a business in which he has substantial personal investments.
The executive order, which was light on details, said the Trump administration would create a working group on digital assets to come up with the plan, which would include “regulatory and legislative proposals.” The group would also evaluate a potential national cryptocurrency stockpile, a government-controlled stash of digital coins that the industry has spent months lobbying the new administration to create.
“The digital asset industry plays a crucial role in innovation and economic development in the United States, as well as our nation’s international leadership,” the order said. “It is therefore the policy of my administration to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets.”
Mr. Trump has a significant personal stake in the success of the crypto industry. He and his sons last year helped start a crypto company called World Liberty Financial, which is selling a new digital currency called WLFI. Last week, he and his wife, Melania, each began selling memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency inspired by an online joke or celebrity mascot.
The ventures have drawn criticism from ethics experts concerned about conflicts of interest. In effect, Mr. Trump is trying to write the rules for business ventures from which he may personally profit. He has vowed to end the Biden administration’s crackdown on crypto companies and made a series of personnel selections at key federal agencies that appear poised to boost the crypto industry’s prospects.
Still, the executive order did not go nearly as far as many in the crypto industry had hoped. Mr. Trump did not order federal agencies to drop lawsuits against crypto companies, nor direct the government to start buying Bitcoin.
A one-time skeptic who dismissed Bitcoin as a scam, Mr. Trump became an outspoken enthusiast for cryptocurrencies on the campaign trail, as the crypto industry poured more than $130 million into high-profile congressional races. At a Bitcoin conference in July, Mr. Trump vowed to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
Then, in September, the Trump family started World Liberty Financial to facilitate borrowing and lending in digital currencies. Mr. Trump is not a direct owner of World Liberty Financial, but he receives a cut of the sales of WLFI, the cryptocurrency associated with the platform.
Mr. Trump has moved to reshape the regulatory agencies that pursued crypto companies during the Biden administration. In December, he picked a new chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission who has worked closely with crypto companies. And he tapped the venture investor and digital currency enthusiast David Sacks to oversee his administration’s policies on artificial intelligence and crypto.
On Friday night, Mr. Trump announced that he was creating a memecoin called $Trump. Sales of the memecoin immediately spiked, adding tens of billions of dollars to Mr. Trump’s net worth, at least on paper. The price fell the next day, after Melania Trump announced that she was offering a memecoin, too.
The crypto industry has high expectations for the Trump administration. Crypto executives have lobbied him for months, hoping to secure his support for legislation that would defang the S.E.C. and boost the prices of the leading digital currencies.
Hours before Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the price of Bitcoin surged to a record of more than $109,000, as crypto supporters celebrated the ascent of a man they described as the first “Bitcoin president.”