The White House Crypto Summit kicked off on Friday with key crypto leaders attending the event to discuss the crypto strategic reserve.
High-profile leaders in the crypto industry met with US President Donald Trump in the first-ever White House Crypto Summit that took place on Friday, 3.00 pm EST (4.00 am SGT).
Present at the crypto summit were Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of Gemini Exchange; Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase; and Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple.
“I know that many of you have been fighting for years for this, and it’s an honor to be with you at the White House,” President Trump addressed the attendees in his opening speech.
A key focus of the summit centred around the crypto strategic reserve which he signed an executive order on. In a post on Truth Social, he listed five tokens — BTC, ETH, ADA, XRP, and SOL — to constitute key assets in the reserve.
According to President Trump, the Treasury and Commerce departments will explore ways to accumulate additional BTC holdings for the reserve without burdening taxpayers, and federal agencies are directed to conduct an inventory of all crypto assets held by the US government to determine how they can be easily transferred to the Treasury.
The president also acknowledged the creation of the reserve, which he says, “will be a virtual Fort Knox for digital gold to be housed within the United States Treasury”. The reserve will be capitalised with BTC assets that were forfeited as part of criminal or civil proceedings.
While this boosted confidence in the crypto landscape of the US, the markets dipped as a White House official backpedalled on the expectation that key altcoins would be included in the reserve.
“I think the president just gave five examples of cryptocurrencies in his post. Those five have to be the largest by market cap,” the senior White House official said in a call with reporters ahead of Friday’s White House Crypto Summit.
Another key point of the summit was the acknowledgement and termination of Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Crypto leaders have long referred to the over-regulation of the industry as ‘Operation Choke Point 2.0’, after a previous initiative under President Barack Obama to investigate banks that are suspected of fraud or other misdealing.
During the summit, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) also released a statement affirming that banks can now engage in cryptocurrency activities without the need for approval.
“Today’s action will reduce the burden on banks to engage in crypto-related activities and ensure that these bank activities are treated consistently by the OCC, regardless of the underlying technology.” the statement said.
Attendees of the White House Crypto Summit expressed their optimism at the change in the US crypto regulatory landscape.
“It’s truly wonderful to see how things have changed, and how the pendulum has swung back in the way that it has.” Cameron Winklevoss said during the event.
The easing of crypto regulations could also pave the way for small businesses in the US to tap into cryptocurrencies as well.
“As the administrator of the SBA, small business is a tremendous network that crypto can be deployed against, so the SBA is open to crypto. I look forward to working with all of the leaders in this room” said Kelly Lynn Loeffler, Administrator of the Small Business Administration.
“There’s been a lot of talk about what this White House has and will prioritize with their crypto agenda – most importantly, regulatory clarity through Congressional action, as well as a BTC reserve & crypto stockpile, support for stablecoin innovation backed by US Treasuries, and more.” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse tweeted of the White House Crypto Summit.
