Crypto gets quick return on Trump investment after funding campaign

Crypto executives, companies and investors are getting an early return on their investment in Donald Trump.

After pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week in the White House.

“I don’t think they could have imagined a better outcome than they just got in the past 48 hours,” Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, known for an early bet on Uber, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday. Gurley said that while tech’s newfound influence in Washington may be harmful to some parts of the startup world, “it’s obviously good for crypto.”

The industry’s support for Trump was built on the Republican leader’s promise to stop the government’s crackdown on crypto and implement regulations favorable to those who wanted to develop new types of payment technologies while easing restrictions on investments in cryptocurrencies.

Industry heavyweights like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Binance CEO Richard Teng are lauding the start of a new era.

“You have to remember, the last four years, we really felt like we were being attacked by this administration,” Armstrong told CNBC at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Armstrong criticized the Biden White House for trying to “weaponize the lack of clarity in the rules,” punishing even the companies that were trying to be helpful.

“There were some bad actors too, to be fair,” Armstrong said. “But they even really tried to go after the good actors, I think, like us.” Coinbase was one of the leading corporate donors in the 2024 election cycle.

Bitcoin hit a record high of around $109,000 on Monday and hovered near $105,000 by the end of the week. It’s up more than 50% since Trump’s election victory in early November.

The 48-hour stretch referenced by Gurley included an executive order signed by Trump on Thursday to promote digital asset adoption in the U.S.

Trump called on members of Treasury, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to join forces in a working group to evaluate the potential of stockpiling cryptocurrencies seized by the government.

The order outlined other key priorities, such as protecting bitcoin miners and software developers from what the president called “persecution,” and promoting U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins, while banning a digital dollar from the Federal Reserve.

Venture capitalist David Sacks, who Trump tapped to be the White House AI and crypto czar, joined the president in the Oval Office for the signing of the order.

Later on Thursday, the SEC made a landmark announcement, withdrawing an accounting rule that made institutional crypto adoption more difficult by forcing banks to treat bitcoin and other tokens as a liability on their balance sheet.

The rule, known as SAB 121, was introduced in 2022 and subjected digital assets to strict capital requirements. It also raised the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services and boosted operational costs for financial institutions.

Efforts to overturn SAB 121 gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Biden vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact, further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets beyond derivatives trading and offering exchange-traded funds to wealth management clients.

The move was celebrated by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who on Tuesday was tapped to lead a new “crypto task force” within the agency.

“Bye, bye SAB 121! It’s not been fun,” she wrote in a post on X.

Before the SEC’s announcement, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in Davos that from a regulatory perspective, the bank couldn’t own bitcoin and that it would revisit the issue if the rules changed. The CEOs of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America also said that President Trump’s pro-crypto tone could reshape their plans and potentially lead to expanded digital offerings.

Days earlier, Gary Gensler stepped down from his role as SEC chair. Gensler, who emerged as an adversary to the crypto industry, had defended the rule as necessary to protect investors in the event of crypto firm bankruptcies. Trump’s pick to succeed Gensler is former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, who is currently CEO at Patomak Global Partners.

On Tuesday, his second day in office, Trump granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road. Ulbricht, 40, had been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole since 2015, after he was convicted in federal court on seven charges that included distributing narcotics and conspiring to commit computer hacking.

Silk Road operated from 2011 to 2013, serving as a dark web marketplace where users bought and sold a mix of contraband, including illegal narcotics like heroin. The platform facilitated more than $200 million in sales, according to federal prosecutors, and was tied to the death of at least six people.

At its peak, Silk Road functioned as a global drug bazaar, with transactions conducted largely in bitcoin, making it one of the earliest large-scale applications of a cryptocurrency. Prosecutors later argued that the anonymity afforded by bitcoin was instrumental in letting Silk Road vendors mask their identities.

Ulbricht had become a cult hero of sorts in the crypto community, and the “Free Ross” movement had gained resonance among conservative media personalities and politicians.

“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Binance, commented on X with a clapping emoji after the pardon was announced. Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in April, after pleading guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at his crypto exchange.

Most notably, the president has been frolicking in a part of the market that’s notorious for scams. Last weekend, while crypto leaders and members of Trump’s family and inner circle were partying at the Crypto Ball in Washington, the $TRUMP meme coin was taking off online.

Then came the $MELANIA coin. Taken together, the Trump family made billions of dollars on paper due to their ownership of assets created out of thin air. Crypto enthusiasts worry that it’s a troubling sign of Trump’s real intent and is damaging to the credibility of an industry that’s trying to prove its legitimacy.

“Call me old fashioned but I think presidents should focus on running the country and not launching scam tokens,” wrote Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures, in a post on X.

The website for $TRUMP says 80% of the supply is held by the Trump Organization and affiliates.

Lawmakers also have objections.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jake Auchincloss, both Massachusetts Democrats, raised issues regarding the first couple using their positions for enrichment, along with the potential for “rug-pull” scams.

“We write with deep concern about the decision by President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to launch two meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, that allow them to earn extraordinary profits off his Presidency,” the pair said in a letter obtained by CNBC.com. “These coins do not create new faster, cheaper, and safer payments rails. These coins do not help people borrow more affordably. They do not improve the financial system in any way for consumers.”

$TRUMP is now trading at under $30, down more than 50% from its peak shortly after launch. The $MELANIA token has plunged more than 80% from its high, and is currently trading below $2.50.

The meme coins are subject to a multi-year vesting schedule, ensuring that the majority of tokens cannot be liquidated all at once. Without selling any tokens, former Coinbase executive and crypto analyst Conor Grogan estimates that the Trump team still generated $58 million in trading fees on the first day.

Skepticism isn’t limited to the meme coins.

In Trump’s executive order on Thursday, the president fell short of directing the U.S. to start buying bitcoin directly and holding it as a reserve.

Ahead of the order, Binance CEO Richard Teng told CNBC in Davos that he anticipated the U.S. would establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called it “prudent” for central banks to hold reserves in bitcoin.

Trump had floated the idea on the campaign trail, suggesting that a U.S. bitcoin reserve could be backed by crypto assets seized from hackers and fraud rings, a proposal that remains under consideration.

But in his 1,300-word executive order on Thursday, Trump didn’t just avoid calling for a bitcoin reserve. The word bitcoin was nowhere to be found.

— CNBC’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report.