At the White House, crypto policy vacancy looms large

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, he not only shed his earlier resistance to crypto technology but embraced the industry with the hiring of a high-profile crypto czar and the establishment of his President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets.

Almost two years later, that policy push seems to have gone quiet for the moment, with the departure of Patrick Witt, who had been the final crypto adviser running that office. And when the president recently ushered in a new artificial intelligence czar, the job that was once split between crypto and AI seemed to have dropped its crypto remit.

So who is minding the store for crypto policy at the White House? It’s not clear, even as a handful of people on Capitol Hill continue to suggest that the final weeks of the congressional session after the November elections could still see some legislative action for the industry. The White House still has a staff of policy advisers, and Trump’s administration now boasts several crypto regulatory irons in the fire at agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission. But no new name has been explicitly attached to Trump’s in-house crypto initiatives.

A White House official told CoinDesk on Thursday that Witt’s work was appreciated and wished him “the best of luck in the future endeavors.” The official didn’t comment on who would be taking over.

“Crypto and Clarity Act will continue to be a priority for the president,” the official said.

The White House’s digital assets policy work was never a large operation, but the advisers were highly vocal at times, and their presence could put an important administrative stamp on crypto goals. The effort began several weeks before Trump returned to office in 2025, when the president-elect named David Sacks, the former PayPal executive, as his incoming AI and crypto czar.

Trump also tapped a little-known former college football player, Bo Hines, to be the first director of the digital assets advisory council — at first a one-person effort, but eventually adding a deputy. Hines quickly became the crypto face of the White House, taking constant meetings with crypto insiders and appearing on event stages. And his brief tenure of about eight months concluded with a major win for the industry in Congress: the passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law.

A White House signing and celebration ensued, in which many of the most prominent names in crypto enjoyed front-row seats. Less than two weeks later, the administration released a comprehensive crypto agenda that set out its specific plans for fostering the sector in the U.S.

Having helped establish the U.S. law for stablecoin issuers, Hines took a job running the U.S. arm of the leading issuer, Tether. Meanwhile, a consulting firm he set up with his father and another partner, Nxum, was also paid millions of dollars as the main provider of services for a new political action committee, first revealed in reporting by CoinDesk. The super PAC was funded mostly by Tether’s U.S. financial partner, Cantor Fitzgerald, and led by a Tether exec.

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hines’ Nxum, had received payments from Tether for consulting services while Hines was at the White House working on the GENIUS Act.

Hines’ deputy on the council, Witt, took over for Hines as its new executive director. Another former football star, Witt also had a greater depth of Washington experience, and he became the face of the White House’s push for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Over the ensuing months of negotiations, Witt didn’t conceal his frustration, regularly taking to social media site X to fume about those he saw as getting in the way of the Senate bill that would erect a U.S. regulatory scaffold for crypto markets.

During that legislative process, Sacks stepped down from the czar role in March, leaving Witt and his deputy, Harry Jung, trying to manage the administration’s crypto stance. That was complicated by the fact that President Trump’s own crypto empire figured prominently in the talks, as Democrats demanded that senior government officials be blocked from personal crypto ties.

As the negotiations dragged further into the year — and closer to the elections — the White House offered some concessions that would have applied unprecedented ethics constraints on the president’s digital assets involvement, though Democrats concluded that the agreement didn’t go far enough.

Witt had confirmed in July that he had military-service commitments on the horizon with the Georgia National Guard, but he stayed to complete Clarity Act negotiations, even as his deputy left to join Hines’ Nxum. The legislation slammed into a political roadblock a month ago, failing to advance in a Senate floor vote before the chamber dispersed for a lengthy break leading up to next month’s elections.

Following rumors this week that Witt had already exited, he posted Wednesday night at around midnight to confirm his departure. He thanked agency chiefs and lawmakers that had helped with Clarity, saying that “with regulators and elected officials like you, I rest easy knowing the future of digital asset innovation in America is bright.” He said he’d be moving into the private sector.

Crypto insiders say they aren’t sure who they’ll be dealing with as their market-structure hopes have largely fizzled for the moment.

When Trump moved earlier this month to re-establish an AI overseer, hiring former SEC Chairman and current intelligence director Jay Clayton to lead his Super Intelligence Force, the job no longer mentions a crypto element. While AI and crypto enjoy some overlapping territory, Clayton comes with a rocky crypto history, having been the SEC chief that first began its stance that would be labeled “regulation by enforcement.”