Big players in the crypto industry are in Las Vegas this week for the Bitcoin 2025 conference, which is billed as “the world’s largest Bitcoin event.” Among the speakers are Vice President JD Vance and the White House’s AI and Crypto Czar, David Sacks — another very public signal of the Trump administration’s embrace of crypto.
The Biden administration was not exactly seen as being friendly to crypto.
“Almost every day a new enforcement action was announced by agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission,” said Olga Kharif, senior reporter for crypto at Bloomberg.
Because of that, for the last few years, “The overall impression a lot of investors got was that crypto is not a safe place to be,” Kharif said.
Just a few months into the Trump administration, there’s been a lot of change, said Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs.
The SEC has dropped a number of Biden-era investigations and lawsuits, and the White House announced a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
“What we’ve seen is a real policy shift towards engagement rather than enforcement alone,” Redbord said.
Until recently, he said most big banks had been reluctant to have much to do with crypto. But that’s no longer the case.
“Every one of them now is building something in the digital assets ecosystem. Whether you’re thinking about buying Bitcoin through ETFs, or issuing a stable coin,” Redbord said.
All of this is helping crypto gain legitimacy, said Kharif, and will likely help attract more institutional and individual investors.
“There is a perception of less risk in crypto,” she said. “Although, of course, crypto is highly volatile, very risky, but there is a perception that it’s less so.”
And that’s because of some of the messaging coming from the Trump administration.
