TRUMP PARDONS SILK ROAD CONVICT AND ISSUES PRO-CRYPTO DECREE

Donald Trump is wasting no time fulfilling his vow to make America the “crypto capital of the world.” On Thursday, the President signed an executive order with a grand title

President Trump wasted no time fulfilling his vow to make America the “crypto capital of the world.” On Thursday, he signed an executive order with a grand title “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” aimed to “support the responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy.”

The order establishes the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, chaired by the newly appointed crypto & AI czar, David Sacks. The group will propose a federal regulatory framework for digital assets—stablecoins included—and consider creating a “national digital asset stockpile.” In practical terms, that likely means the government could simply hang on to all the bitcoin, ether, and possibly even FTT tokens (from Sam Bankman-Fried's collapsed FTX) seized from criminals.

Trump's order also slams the door on a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)—a digital version of the dollar critics warned would allow the government to track every transaction.

On his second day in the Oval Office, the President also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road marketplace that enabled users to buy goods, including drugs, with bitcoin. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, in 2015.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, now under Acting Chair Mark Uyeda, jumped in late Thursday to scrap its controversial SAB 121 guidance. The rule forced institutions to treat customer-held tokens as liabilities and effectively shut banks out of crypto custody.

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The fun began even before Trump took office. On Friday, while he was hosting a "Crypto Ball" for the industry's executives in Washington, two memecoins, TRUMP and MELANIA, quietly launched, instantly amassing billions of dollars.

Even by crypto's standards, the launch was unprecedented. TRUMP soared to above $70 within two days, giving the coin a market capitalization of roughly $15 billion. MELANIA hit $2.2 billion within a few hours. About 80% of tokens are controlled by Trump-related entities, which is totally normal and not concerning at all.

You might have heard the breathless claims that Trump's net worth jumped by tens of billions overnight. Those numbers are theoretical, based on tokens that cannot be sold at present. Forbes does not count unsellable assets toward net worth. That said, the hundreds of millions of crypto he offloaded over the weekend did bolster his fortune. Read more.

The chaos catapulted Moonshot, the app letting users buy memecoins with Apple Pay, to the top of the App Store charts.

This is just Week One of Trump 2.0. It should be a wild ride.

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ELSEWHERE:

French Crypto Entrepreneur And Wife Are Freed After Kidnapping [The New York Times]

Comer Investigating Crypto ‘Debanking’ [The Hill]

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Takes A Sip Of The Crypto ‘Rat Poison’ He Once Said He Would Never Go Near [Fortune]