President Donald Trump pledged to support legislative efforts to form a regulatory framework for stablecoins on Friday, after ordering the creation of a U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve and a separate stockpile of other digital assets.
“I also want to express my strong support for the efforts of lawmakers in Congress as they work on bills to provide regulatory certainty for dollar-backed stablecoins and the digital assets market,” Trump said during a gathering of crypto executives at the White House. “They’re working very hard on that.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was also present at the meeting, said he intended to work with agencies and regulators including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Internal Revenue Service on updating and amending previous guidance.
“We are going to keep the U.S. the dominant reserve currency in the world, and we will use stablecoins to do that,” he said.
Coinbase Global Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong, Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor of the company known until recently as MicroStrategy Inc., and the billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were among those who attended the session, which the White House described as a roundtable gathering.
Trump signed an executive order late Thursday creating the Bitcoin reserve and the separate stockpile of other tokens, to be capitalized with crypto forfeited in legal proceedings. Both the reserve and the stockpile will contain crypto forfeited as part of legal proceedings, the action said.
Last month, Senator Bill Hagerty introduced legislation that seeks to create a predictable regulatory environment for stablecoins, cryptocurrencies marketed as being less volatile than other tokens because their value is pegged to the dollar or other stable assets. Proponents say that federal regulation would lend legitimacy to the asset class that could lead to broader adoption. Stablecoins serve as the main conduit for crypto trading and have become more popular for use in payment systems.
White House crypto czar David Sacks said earlier that one of the first steps taken after the executive action will be an audit of how much cryptocurrency the government holds.
The U.S. had obtained around 400,000 Bitcoin over the past decade, largely a function of tokens seized in relation to criminal and civil litigation, Sacks told Bloomberg TV in an interview on Friday. The government believes it is still in possession of around half of that sum, Sacks said.
“We say we believe because no one knows for sure, we never had a proper audit,” he said.
The U.S. currently owns roughly $17.5 billion in Bitcoin and about $400 million worth of several other tokens in its known digital wallets, according to data from blockchain analytics researcher Arkham. Bitcoin fell around 3% to $87,172 as of 4:27 p.m. in New York.
The executive order authorizes the Treasury and Commerce departments to develop “budget-neutral strategies” for buying more Bitcoin for the reserve with no incremental costs to taxpayers. The government will not acquire additional crypto for the separate stockpile of other digital assets beyond those obtained through forfeiture proceedings.
“With the reserve, the goal is long-term preservation,” Sacks said. “With the stockpile, the goal is responsible stewardship.”
Trump made a number of crypto-specific promises to the industry ahead of his re-election last November, with the goal of making the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”
A previous executive order on digital assets, issued shortly after his inauguration in January, mandated the creation of a working group comprised of agency heads who would recommend policies for the sector to develop policies on digital assets.
The industry has seen wins on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have introduced crypto-friendly legislation, and across the financial regulatory agencies, to which Trump appointed crypto-friendly leaders. The Securities and Exchange Commission has paused or closed more than 10 crypto investigations and cases in recent weeks.
Update, March 7, 2025: Recasts lede and updates with quotes from President Donald Trump and Secretary Scott Bessent in the second and third paragraphs.
