Following a torrent of executive orders issued in his first few days back in the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump added another one to the list Thursday, this time aimed at promoting U.S. leadership in cryptocurrency — an industry he now holds a considerable stake in.
Co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, Robert Weissman, decried the move, writing in a statement Thursday that "Trump is pushing crypto because he's in on the racket."
This executive order "will help super-inflate what's already a dangerous speculative bubble in an artificial, unregulated asset that will, eventually, burst. The inevitable crash will badly injure millions of everyday Americans," Weissman wrote.
The executive order calls for the establishment of a working group on digital assets to explore the possibility of creating a "national digit asset stockpile"—something that crypto industry has pushed Trump's administration to create. That group would also "propose a federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets." The order, however, didn't go as far as some in the crypto industry had hoped, remarkedThe New York Times.
Just prior to his inauguration, Trump launched a so-called meme coin—"$TRUMP"—which as of Thursday afternoon had a market cap of about $7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The digital asset bitcoin also surged to new heights Monday, the day of Trump's inauguration, buoyed by expectations that the incoming administration will be friendly to the crypto industry.
Trump's decision to launch his crypto coin has been criticized on ethics grounds.
Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, wrote in an MSNBC op-ed published Friday that having wealth linked to cryptocurrency will "obviously impact" how Trump's administration approaches regulating the market.
What's more, Hauser warned, "crypto markets are frequently believed to be subject to manipulation by 'whales,' i.e., large investors. Having a Trump asset so susceptible to manipulation is highly concerning. Consider whales who might manipulate the Trump coin's worth to buy influence with the president by intervening with purchases at strategic moments."