Original title: 5 Ideas Pitched at the White House Crypto Summit Behind Closed Doors
Original article by: Veronica Irwin, White House author
Original translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editors note: This article summarizes the main content of the White House Cryptocurrency Summit on March 7 and puts forward several policy recommendations. Former CFTC Chairman Giancarlo suggested restoring the concept of private armed ships 200 years ago, allowing the government to authorize hackers to fight foreign cyber attacks. Michael Saylor advocated that the United States should buy 5%-25% of the Bitcoin supply and become a super-large account directly. Matt Huang of Paradigm spoke for Tornado Cash developers, and Tenev promoted the tokenization of financial assets.
The following is the original content (for easier reading and understanding, the original content has been reorganized):
Ahead of the first-ever White House Crypto Summit on March 7, attendees had the opportunity to present realistic cryptocurrency policy proposals to the White House’s cryptocurrency team and top regulators.
President Trump himself did not participate in the discussion, appearing only for the broadcast portion of the summit for the first 30 minutes.
However, White House Digital Asset Advisory Committee Executive Director Beau Hynes, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Acting Chairwoman Carolyn Pham, U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer were present for that portion of the event, according to an attendee.
Specifically, Sachs asked what new policy topics the White House should focus on. While information about attendees’ specific requests was kept confidential, Unchained has learned that five proposals were submitted for consideration.
Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo: Privatizing White Hat Hackers
Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, the only delegate from Trump’s first term to attend the summit, suggested that the U.S. government reinstate the Letters of Marque and Reprisal Act, effectively allowing private companies to conduct hacking attacks on foreign adversaries on behalf of the U.S. government, as Giancarlo explained in Unchained. These companies, referred to as “private armed vessels” in the bill, would be licensed by the U.S. government to take actions to seize the property of foreign adversaries, such as the more than $6 billion stolen by the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus.
The last time Congress granted such licenses was more than 200 years ago, when they were issued to merchant ships that encouraged the plunder of foreign adversary ships, such as British Royal Navy ships. At that time, privateers were required to report their seized property to the U.S. government, even though piracy was a serious problem.
According to those present, Minister Bessant requested to be sent an editorial published by Giancarlo and CoinFund Managing Partner and President Chris Perkins in Cointelegraph that mentioned the topic.
Michael Saylor, Co-founder of Strategy Firm: Buying Bitcoin in Bulk
Michael Saylor proposed during the summit that the U.S. should buy more Bitcoin — and a lot of it. As first reported by CoinDesk, Saylor told attendees that he wants the U.S. to acquire 5% to 25% of the total Bitcoin supply over the next 20 years, or about 1,050,000 to 5,250,000 Bitcoins. Currently, that many Bitcoins are worth between $83 billion and $417 billion.
Saylor’s proposal is clearly more ambitious than the Bitcoin Act, recently reintroduced by Senator Loomis, which proposes that the U.S. acquire 1 million Bitcoins, or about 5% of the total supply, over the same time span as Saylor’s proposal. In the last Congress, Loomis struggled to get the Bitcoin Act through committee, but support within the Republican Party was not strong enough, in addition to a split Congress. The government’s proposal to acquire Bitcoin has also been criticized as being contrary to the libertarian ideals behind Bitcoin’s creation, and that a single entity owning such a large percentage of the supply would lead to greater centralization.
Legal experts say that if the U.S. government used federal funds to purchase Bitcoin (rather than adopting a budget-neutral strategy, as the president has pledged in his executive order to create a reserve fund), it would likely require congressional approval because Congress holds spending power under the Constitution — although some Bitcoin advocacy groups have drafted potential executive orders that ostensibly identify possible loopholes that would allow the executive branch to take such action.
According to CoinDesk and photos of Saylor’s notes posted on social media, he also proposed dividing cryptocurrencies into four categories: tokens backed by specific issuers and used for capital creation, tokens backed by securities and commodities, currencies, and tokens used for capital preservation. He said that adopting this classification would help resolve legal uncertainties about how different types of digital assets should be regulated.
Matt Huang, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Paradigm: Fighting for Justice for Roman Storm
Huang did not directly ask the administration to consider new policies, but instead called for a focus on a matter the administration had deprioritized: the Justice Department’s case against Roman Storm, the American developer of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, a person briefed after the meeting said.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged naturalized U.S. citizen Roman Storm with money laundering, unlicensed money transmission and sanctions violations for creating the tool, which actually provides privacy protection for users by obfuscating cryptocurrency transactions. Huang said the Justice Department should reconsider the lawsuit under the Biden administration.
Tornado Cash processed more than $2.8 billion in transactions in the six months before it was sanctioned by OFAC in August 2022, and Storm was indicted a year later. Tornado Cash is built on the Ethereum blockchain and runs automatically, without requiring developers to approve users or transactions to operate. However, the Justice Department said the developers failed to effectively intervene to prevent sanctioned entities, including the North Korean hacker group Lazarus, from using the tool.
DeFi advocates warn that holding Tornado Cash’s developers liable for malicious uses of their software could discourage developers from creating tools designed to protect privacy, or worse, could inhibit the development of decentralized DeFi programs altogether.
Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped dozens of civil cases against crypto companies, the Department of Justices stance on this criminal case has not changed, and the penalties in this case are more severe.
Paradigm donated $1.25 million to Storm’s legal defense in January in preparation for his upcoming trial, which is set to begin in April. “The prosecution’s case threatens to hold software developers criminally liable for the wrongdoings of third parties, which could have a chilling effect on the crypto industry and beyond,” Huang said on X at the time.
David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc and Bitcoin Magazine: Urgently Buy Bitcoin
Bailey used his time at the summit to encourage the White House to use every means possible to acquire more Bitcoin. First, Bailey asked the White House crypto team to push for passage of the Bitcoin Act, legislation proposed by Loomis that would allow the United States to purchase 1 million Bitcoins over the next 20 years. Bailey said this was critical because it would put strategic Bitcoin reserves into federal law that could not be easily overturned by the next presidential administration, even if the new administration had a different view on the value of Bitcoin.
Bailey also told attendees that he believes the government needs to accumulate Bitcoin urgently in order to compete with other countries that have already bought Bitcoin, such as El Salvador and Bhutan, as well as the Bitcoin acquisitions he expects to happen elsewhere after Trump signed an executive order this month. Politicians in Germany, Brazil and Poland, for example, are considering building Bitcoin reserves. He even raised the possibility of the U.S. government forming a public-private partnership with Bitcoin miners, providing access to hydroelectric power in exchange for Bitcoin miners contributing to a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Third, Bailey suggested that the United States use its strategic Bitcoin reserves to issue Bitcoin-backed Treasury bonds in the future. His reasoning is that debt partially backed by appreciating assets such as Bitcoin could reduce the interest the U.S. government needs to pay.
Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood Markets: Tokenization
Tenev focused discussions at the summit on not just crypto tokens, but also on using blockchain technology to tokenize traditional financial instruments, such as equity in private companies.
Tenev said this tokenization of crypto-asset securities will provide U.S. companies with a competitive advantage on the global stage. “It’s good for companies because it increases possible shareholders, it’s good for the world because people can get easier access to high-quality companies, and it’s good for entrepreneurs because they can raise capital more easily,” he said.
Additionally, he mentioned that people who don’t currently meet the wealth requirements to become accredited investors should be able to purchase these tokenized shares, fundamentally changing the investment dynamics in the U.S. and allowing ordinary people to invest in companies that haven’t yet gone public.
Currently, in the United States, only those with a net worth of more than $1 million, or an annual income of more than $200,000 (or $300,000 combined with a spouse or partner) can be considered accredited investors.
In an op-ed published earlier this year, Tenev said these wealth-based requirements unfairly prevent ordinary people from maximizing their investments and called on the SEC to allow people to self-certify by demonstrating a deep understanding of investment risks. It is worth noting that Robinhoods app-based investing platform is designed to make investing more accessible to low- and middle-income people, and expanding the types of assets available to this user group will undoubtedly benefit it.
Outlook
Government representatives at the meeting did not commit attendees to implementing any of their recommendations. However, according to a White House source, “the purpose of the summit was to solicit input and feedback from the crypto industry.” “The summit was a success and was well received by government and industry leaders.”
