By Suzanne McGee, Michelle Conlin and Trevor Hunnicutt
(Reuters) – Cryptocurrency industry elite are set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday to discuss how the government will enact Trump’s vision of making the country the “crypto capital of the world.”
Trump will host players including Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy and Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of the president’s own crypto business, World Liberty Financial, according to the executives’ social media posts.
Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood Markets will also attend, according to a spokeswoman for Robinhood. Witkoff and Saylor did not respond to requests for comment.
Attendees expect the event to focus on Trump’s plans to build a strategic reserve containing bitcoin and four other coins. Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to establish the reserve, directing the secretaries of Treasury and Commerce to develop “budget-neutral strategies” for acquiring additional bitcoin that have no “incremental costs” on taxpayers.
The event is scheduled to begin at 1:30 pm ET (1830 GMT), according to those invited.
The White House announced the summit last Friday, February 28, but did not return a request for comment on the event’s agenda and attendees, nor on the possibility for executive actions.
“For the first time, industry leaders feel they’re walking into a collaborative discussion,” said Les Borsai, co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, a crypto investment adviser, who said he did not receive an invitation.
Participants said they are focused on any further details on the strategic reserve, a government stockpile of crypto assets.
The reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, the White House crypto czar, billionaire David Sacks, said in a post on social media platform X.
“This (strategic reserve) is going to be the biggest point of contention for many of us,” said JP Richardson, co-founder and CEO of Exodus, a bitcoin wallet developer. Although he owns the four other coins that Trump has suggested including in the reserve, he does not think they have a place in a strategic reserve.
“Crypto has made big strides, but it’s still a relatively nascent industry,” Richardson said. The other coins are smaller and function in a very different way, one he said may create more risk.
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, posted on X on Sunday that a bitcoin-only reserve was “probably … the best option.” Both Richardson and Armstrong confirmed to Reuters that they would be attending the summit.
In a post on X, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, who also confirmed his attendance at the summit, hailed Trump’s recognition that “we live in a multichain world” stretching beyond bitcoin. XRP, the coin tied to Ripple, is one of the four other cryptocurrencies Trump has suggested may be added to a crypto reserve.
Attendees said they were optimistic about working with an administration that views crypto as a mainstream asset class and expressed hope for a straightforward regulatory process.
“What everyone really needs to have at this point is clarity on what the level of scrutiny and intensity of regulation will be, who the key regulators will be,” said Yesha Yadav, associate dean and professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
That could speed up the process of approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission of a flurry of new listings of exchange-traded funds.
Trump’s family has launched cryptocurrency meme coins and he also holds a stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform, which has sparked some conflict-of-interest concerns.
His aides have said Trump has handed over control of his business ventures, which are being reviewed by outside ethics lawyers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee, Michelle Conlin in New York, Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Lisa Pauline Mattackal, Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris, Alexandra Ulmer in Washington; Editing by Megan Davies and Jacqueline Wong)
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