Was last week’s landmark White House crypto summit a one-time event, or will the Trump administration continue to formally dialogue with industry leaders?
Bo Hines, executive director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets, told Decrypt that while he and his colleagues are still mulling that question, Friday’s large-scale gathering of dozens of top crypto executives and high-ranking Trump officials in one room is unlikely to be replicated soon.
Instead, Hines thinks the White House should convene targeted “sub-vertical summits” that will allow for “in-depth conversations on issue-specific policy areas.”
On Friday, President Donald Trump convened a gathering of over 30 crypto industry executives and government officials at the White House. Nabbing an invite to the high-profile event quickly became a mark of status in crypto circles, and organizers expanded the State Dining Room to accommodate, adding rows of extra seats to the historic venue.
Attendees on Friday included the CEOs of Coinbase, Ripple, Robinhood, Kraken, and Crypto.com, among several other companies. Strategy co-founder and Bitcoin permabull Michael Saylor and Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang were also in attendance, as were Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Among the D.C. brass in attendance were Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham, and SEC Crypto Task Force Chief Hester Peirce, and many others.
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Hines believes that more targeted industry summits moving forward will allow the White House to maximize its nimbleness when it comes to charting a course for crypto policy.
“We just want to make sure it's a process that's efficient and allows us to get the best information possible, so we can make good decisions,” he said.
The White House official elaborated that such sub-committees would likely cover policy areas involved in ongoing legislative initiatives on Capitol Hill. Currently, Congress is considering crypto-related legislation in two key areas: stablecoins and general markets structure.
Other smaller summits could additionally focus on categories with fewer players, he said. Potential future mini-summit topics floated by Hines include centralized exchanges, crypto mining and energy, and investment.
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Originally, in the months following Trump’s reelection, the president appeared poised to establish a permanent crypto council populated with the industry’s top executives.
Those plans then seem to have changed at some point in January, with the White House opting to instead establish a digital assets working group populated exclusively by administration officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump Admin AI and crypto czar David Sacks, and Hines.
Hines said that following Friday’s first-ever crypto summit, a one-time event that allowed industry leaders to share their perspectives with key members of the Trump administration, he plans to huddle with the digital assets working group, then with congressional leadership, and from there devise concrete policy action items.
