President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning so-called central bank digital currencies and establishing an executive group to examine the future of digital assets in the United States.
On Jan. 23, as part of a flurry of orders the White House has issued since his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump signed an order titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.”
The 1,300-word executive order said it would “promote United States leadership in digital assets and financial technology while protecting economic liberty.”
In a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, earlier on Jan. 23, Trump reiterated his intent to make the United States “the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.”
First, the order bans central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) on the basis that they “threaten the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States.”
It defines a CBDC as a form of digital money or monetary value “that is a direct liability of the central bank.”
“Agencies are hereby prohibited from undertaking any action to establish, issue, or promote CBDCs within the jurisdiction of the United States or abroad,” the order said.
Second, it established a new executive commission called the “President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets.”
According to the order, that group would work within the National Economic Council and would be chaired by David Sacks, the White House’s special adviser for artificial intelligence and crypto.
The working group would also include several Cabinet-level members including the secretary of the Treasury and the attorney general.
Financial regulators like the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the chairman of the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission would also be asked to sit in the group.
The group, according to the order, is directed to “propose a federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets, including stablecoins.”
Additionally, it would be asked to “evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile.”
Third, the executive order repealed existing orders dealing with digital assets issued in 2022 and directed the secretary of the Treasury to “immediately revoke” an existing federal framework for dealing with digital assets.
The order laid out the Trump administration’s view of digital assets and cryptocurrency saying it views the industry as playing a “critical role in innovation and economic development” in the United States.
“It is therefore the policy of my administration to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy,” the order said.
That, specifically, means promoting and protecting access to “public blockchain networks,” the “development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins,” access to banking services, and “providing regulatory clarity and certainty built on technology-neutral regulations.”
While Trump was dismissive of cryptocurrency in the past, he became an ardent supporter of digital assets during his 2024 campaign for a second term in office.
He was also supported by a number of notable figures in the crypto space, including Sacks, and was boosted in part by a super political action committee FairShake that was financed by leading figures in cryptocurrency.
On Jan. 20, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency branded as $TRUMP. He is also linked to a crypto project known as World Liberty Financial.
This is an incredibly important EO, but President Trump’s proposal for a “national digital asset stockpile” might as well serve as a kind of unofficial CBDC precisely because legacy crypto like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Avalanche are anything but decentralized; in fact, they all have immutable ledgers that can easily be tracked by governments, hackers, and others.
The following is an incredibly important warning about Bitcoin because most people are not technologically sophisticated enough to appreciate the many dangers of this blockchain technology, and that goes for Dr. Kruse and the majority of Bitcoin “experts” out there: Bitcoin is a primitive blockchain technology that is extremely susceptible to a series of exploits, not limited to the 51% Attack, Sybil Attack and Eclipse Attack; Bitcoin does not have trusted third party (TTP) and is not in any way decentralized. Bitcoin also has the lowest of all major cryptocurrencies Nakamoto Coefficient of 4 (versus Avalanche’s Nakamoto Coefficient of around 30), which means that it is the most vulnerable to bad actor and State level attacks. A Nakamoto Coefficient of 4 means that the minimum number of nodes or entities required to compromise the Bitcoin blockchain is just 4, which is why, say, China, with all of its miners, can easily pull the plug on Bitcoin at any point.
Bitcoin’s low Nakamoto Coefficient means that just four mining pools control over half of its hash rate, making it vulnerable to a 51% attack if these pools were controlled by a single, well-resourced entity (again, think: China, or the Intelligence Industrial Complex, etc). This centralization risk was highlighted in 2019 when Binance briefly considered contacting the largest pools to reverse a hacked transaction, raising concerns about the potential for transaction manipulation. What this means is that a major crypto exchange has the power to completely compromise the entire blockchain; therefore, Bitcoin is anything but decentralized, and it is anything but secure.
(This Substack will be publishing an important crypto article on a revolutionary new quantum-proofed blockchain technology in the coming months.)
Additional color on how the illegitimate Federal government should never have any crypto reserves given that said “reserves” would either have been purchased from monies stolen via taxes, or via unconstitutional forfeiture laws:
Civil asset forfeiture is the most insane Government funding technique that is out there, and you most definitely do not want this declared as a strategic means to pump the Government's bitcoin bags.
While President Trump’s ban on CBDC’s is a most excellent step in the right direction for freedom, his team must abandon their crypto “reserve,” or if they must have one to embrace a truly DeFi privacy coin that is quantum-proof and stakeless, which this Substack will soon be covering in a very important blockchain article.
“They want you dead.” - but first they want all your assets. Seems like they are rebranding and reinventing items like CBDC that have received push back from conservatives and are reintroducing them to conservatives through MAGA, Trump, Musk etc. in ways which they hope they will just be accepted and embraced. The guy that brought operation warp speed is now bringing operation warp speed AI technocracy and everyone seems to be oblivious to it.
“They want you dead.” - but first they want all your assets. Seems like they are rebranding and reinventing items like CBDC that have received push back from conservatives and are reintroducing them to conservatives through MAGA, Trump, Musk etc. in ways which they hope they will just be accepted and embraced. The guy that brought operation warp speed is now bringing operation warp speed AI technocracy and everyone seems to be oblivious to it.
“Bitcoin is anything but decentralized, and it is anything but secure”