President Donald Trump’s crypto working group finally issued its massive report and its pages of U.S. policy recommendations, and two of the people behind that effort told CoinDesk that decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols should fare just fine in the administration’s vision of the U.S. sector.
«Decentralized protocols can definitely meet the rules of the road,» said Bo Hines, the executive director for the group of regulators and senior administration officials that collectively issued the 163-page report on Wednesday. In a CoinDesk TV interview with Jennifer Sanasie, Hines and the Treasury Department’s Tyler Williams shared some of the highlights of the lengthy report, including its treatment of DeFi.
«We want people innovating and developing here in the U.S.,» Hines said from the White House, and that requires making sure developers «feel as if they have the rules of the road laid out for them.»
Hines said the administration has tried to take «immense steps to do that and offer guidance.» He said Treasury’s removal of Tornado Cash sanctions should show «we understand how important immutable smart contracts are in open source code.»
Williams added that the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act passed recently by the House of Representatives, has already made strides to ensure the industry would have an avenue for complying with the Bank Secrecy Act. He said this week’s report delves into some of the ground already covered by lawmakers.
The report was embraced by industry insiders as another step forward in Trump’s aggressive crypto agenda, and Hines called it «probably the most comprehensive piece of work on digital assets ever produced, and I don’t think that should be lost on anyone.»
Virtually all of the policy initiatives and efforts described in its pages are already familiar to the dozens of crypto lobbyists working the front lines in Washington, so it didn’t bring any surprise initiatives.
«While many of the policy items that you’ll see are not unfamiliar to the audience and to the public, I think we put a little bit more meat on the bones in terms of the action items we wanna see,» Williams said.
One detail that went missing in the report was a description of the next steps for the so-called Bitcoin Strategic Reserve contemplated by the administration, based on an order from Trump that such a stockpile should be initiated.
Hines, who has been asked similar questions about the reserve for months without offering a significant update, said, «People will be very pleased with what we come up with.»
«There’s an infrastructure piece of this, as well, and Treasury’s working diligently on that, making sure everything’s set up properly, so that we can move forward in the best way possible.»
At the White House’s Wednesday launch of the report, the administration invited industry representatives to share the moment.
Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber that lobbies in Washington on crypto policy, said about 40 people attended alongside senior officials from the administration, including Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, crypto czar David Sacks, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Carbone said in a memo on the event that the officials were «gracious in thanking the industry voices and experts who helped contribute to this comprehensive report,» which he said included several from his organization.
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