Before the cameras started rolling at the inaugural White House Crypto summit on March 7, attendees were given the opportunity to pitch specific crypto policy ideas to the White House crypto team and top regulators. 

President Trump himself was not present for this discussion, and only attended the summit for roughly the 30 minutes that were broadcast. 

However, Crypto Czar David Sacks, Executive Director of the President’s Digital Assets Advisory Council Bo Hines, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, and Majority Whip in the House of Representatives Tom Emmer were all present for this portion of the event according to one summit attendee.

Specifically, Sacks asked for new policy topics the White House should focus on next. Information has been tight-lipped about the attendees’ specific requests, but Unchained has been able to learn about five proposals submitted for consideration. 

Chris Giancarlo, Former Chair of the CFTC: Privatizing White Hat Hackers 

Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, the only representative from Trump’s first term in office present at the summit, suggested that the United States government resurrect the letters of the Marque and Reprisal, effectively enlisting private companies to hack foreign adversaries on the behalf of the United States government, as explained by Giancarlo on Unchained. These companies’ — referred to in the letters as “privateers” by the letters — would be licensed by the United States government to act to seize property of foreign adversaries, for example the over $6 billion in funds stolen by North Korean state-funded hacking group Lazarus. 

The last time Congress granted letters was over 200 years ago, when they were given to shipping vessels encouraged to loot the ships of foreign adversaries, like those in the British Royal Navy. At the time, the privateers were required to report the assets they seized to the U.S. Government, though piracy was a significant issue. 

According to the attendee, Secretary Bessent asked to be sent an op-ed Giancarlo and CoinFund Managing Partner and President Chris Perkins wrote on invoking the topic in Cointelegraph. 

Michael Saylor, Co-Founder of Strategy: Gorge on Bitcoin

Michael Saylor used his time to advocate for the United States buying more bitcoin — and a lot of it. As was first reported by CoinDesk, Saylor told the room that he would like the United States to acquire between 5% and 25% of the total supply of Bitcoin, or between 1,050,000 and 5,250,000 bitcoin, over the course of the next 20 years. That much bitcoin is currently worth between $83 billion and $417 billion.

Saylor’s suggestion is notably more ambitious than Senator Lummis’ recently reintroduced Bitcoin Act, which would have the United States acquire one million Bitcoin, approximately 5% of the total supply over the same time period. Senator Lummis struggled to move the Bitcoin Act out of committee last session due not only to a politically divided Congress but lackluster support within the Republican party. The idea of the government acquiring Bitcoin has also been criticized as in opposition to the libertarian ideals behind the creation of Bitcoin and the increased centralization created by having one entity own so much of the supply. 

Legal experts have said that spending federal funds on Bitcoin (rather than pursuing a budget-neutral strategy, which the president has promised to do in his Executive Order establishing a reserve) would likely have to be approved by Congress, which has the power of the purse under the Constitution — though several bitcoin advocacy groups have drafted potential executive orders that ostensibly identify loopholes that could give the executive branch the ability to do so.  

According to the CoinDesk report and photos of Saylor’s notes posted on social media, he also proposed dividing crypto coins 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. Using this taxonomy, he said, would help resolve regulatory uncertainty over how different types of digital assets should be regulated. 

Matt Huang, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Paradigm: Justice for Roman Storm

Matt Huang didn’t necessarily ask the administration to consider a new policy so much as focus its attention on something it has deprioritized: the Department of Justice’s case against the American developer of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, according to a person who was briefed after the summit. The Department of Justice charged naturalized American citizen Roman Storm of money laundering, unlicensed money transmission, and sanctions violations for having created the tool, which effectively scrambles cryptocurrency transactions in order to provide privacy to its users. Huang said that the DOJ should reconsider the Biden-era suit. 

Tornado Cash processed over $2.8 billion in transactions in the six months before being sanctioned by OFAC in August 2022, and Storm’s indictment one year later. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Tornado Cash operates autonomously and does not require its developers to approve users or transactions in order to operate. However, the Department of Justice says the developers did not adequately intervene in preventing the tool’s use by sanctioned entities, including the North Korean hacking group Lazarus. 

DeFi advocates warn that by holding Tornado Cash’s developers liable for bad actors’ use of the software could discourage developers from creating tools meant to preserve privacy, or worse, autonomous DeFi programs at all. Whereas the SEC has dropped dozens of civil cases against crypto companies, the DOJ is yet to change course on this criminal case, for which the penalties are much more severe. Paradigm donated $1.25 million to Storm’s legal defense in January, ahead of the trial which starts in April. “The prosecution’s case threatens to hold software developers criminally liable for the bad acts of third parties, which could have a chilling effect in crypto and beyond,” Huang said on X at the time. 

David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc and Bitcoin Magazine: Buying Bitcoin With Urgency

Bailey used his time 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 the passage of the Bitcoin Act, Lummis’ legislation that would have the United States purchase one million bitcoin over the next 20 years. This was crucial, Bailey said, because it would make a strategic bitcoin reserve federal law, which couldn’t be easily overturned by the next presidential administration, should it have a different perspective on its worthiness. 

Bailey also told the group that he thought the administration needed to accumulate Bitcoin “with urgency,” in order to compete with other nation states such as El Salvador and Bhutan that have acquired bitcoin and the additional bitcoin acquisitions he expected elsewhere after Trump signed the executive order earlier this month. Politicians in Germany, Brazil, and Poland are considering bitcoin reserves, for example. He even raised the possibility that the United States government develop public-private partnerships with bitcoin miners to lend them access to hydropower, in exchange for bitcoin miners contributing to the strategic bitcoin reserve. 

Third, Bailey suggested that the United States utilize the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to issue bitcoin-backed Treasuries in the future. The rationale would be that debt backed, at least in part, by an appreciating asset such as bitcoin, could lower the interest required to be paid by the U.S. government. 

Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood Markets: Tokenization

Tenev used his time to focus the conversation on not just crypto tokens, but use of the blockchain to tokenize traditional financial instruments, like equity in a private company. 

Tokenization of such crypto asset securities would give US companies a competitive advantage on the global stage, Tenev said. “It will be good for companies since it increases their possible shareholders, good for the world since they would have easier access to high quality companies, and good for entrepreneurs since they can raise capital more easily,” according to notes from his remarks at the meeting.

Moreover, he said that people who would not currently meet the wealth requirements to become an accredited investor should be able to purchase these tokenized equities, fundamentally reshaping investment dynamics in the United States by allowing everyday people to invest in companies that have not gone public and been listed on public stock exchanges. 

Currently, only people who have a net worth of over $1 million, or have an income over $200,000 annually (or $300,000 with a spouse or partner) can qualify as accredited investors in the United States.

In an op-ed Tenev published earlier this year, Tenev said that these wealth-based requirements unfairly blocked everyday people from maximizing their investments, and urged instead for the SEC to allow people to self-certify by demonstrating an advanced understanding of investment risk instead. Notably, Robinhood’s app-based investment platform is designed to make investing more accessible to low and middle-income people, and would no doubt benefit from an expansion of the assets which it could offer to that user base. 

What Lies Ahead

The government representatives at the meeting made no promises to the attendees to implement any of the ideas which they suggested. 

However, “the purpose of the Summit was to solicit input and feedback from the crypto industry,” according to a White House source. “The Summit was a success and well received by the administration and industry leaders.”