President Donald Trump’s pledge to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world” has moved well beyond his campaign rhetoric. Since returning to office in January 2025, the Trump a
President Donald Trump’s pledge to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world” has moved well beyond his campaign rhetoric.
Since returning to office in January 2025, the Trump administration has issued multiple executive orders covering digital assets and Bitcoin reserves.
Senate holds cloture vote on CLARITY Act (1:51)Last year in July, Trump signed the landmark GENIUS Act into law creating a federal framework for payment stablecoins giving them legitimacy in U.S.' financial fabric.
Now the White House is emphasizing another side of the industry as more overseas networks have come under the scanner for defrauding Americans via crypto and online platforms.
At an Oct. 21 White House roundtable, Trump gathered senior administration officials and called for a strict crackdown on foreign scam centers.
At Wednesday’s roundtable, Trump said federal efforts had made a “very big dent” in overseas fraud circuits.
He said authorities had warned more than 10,000 Americans and prevented at least $1.6 billion in potential losses this year.
FBI Director Kash Patel said more than 20 scam compounds had been dismantled in the duration.
Patel separately said Operation Blackout had targeted scam compounds using trafficked workers across multiple regions. Investigative authorities have seized more than $17 billion from these illegal operations, Patel noted.
That figure comes from the administration and has not been independently audited. So, it's unclear how much is exclusively crypto-related or how much was returned to victims.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during a news conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US on Saturday, April 25, 2026.
Getty Images
A more narrowly documented operation in West Africa during the week of Oct. 6 led to 28 arrests and identified more than $11 million in potentially freezable funds, according to the Justice Department.
This follows Trump’s March 2026 order making cyber-enabled fraud a prosecution priority and an August memorandum allowing vetted private companies to support government-directed disruption of foreign criminal networks.
Companies including Google, Microsoft, Meta, Coinbase and Binance helped disrupt accounts and networks.
Trump’s own family remains deeply involved in crypto.
Reuters estimated in June that the family had made about $2.3 billion from its major crypto ventures, while outside investors had lost a similar amount, including unrealized losses measured through the end of April.
Trump has also held investor-access events tied to the TRUMP meme coin, including a May 2025 dinner for 220 leading token holders and an April 2026 event at Mar-a-Lago for 297 qualifiers.
David Bailey (L), CEO of BTC Inc, and Eric Trump, third child and second son of US President Donald Trump, leave after speaking during the Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong on August 29, 2025.Getty Images
That overlap drew fresh scrutiny on Thursday.
A Circle shareholder filed a federal lawsuit alleging Trump, World Liberty Financial and others of improperly profiting from more than $2 billion in UAE-linked crypto transactions.
World Liberty called the claims “without merit” and said it complies with U.S. laws and regulations. The White House called the lawsuit 'frivolous' and said there are 'no conflicts of interest,' spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNBC.
Trump has taken several major crypto-related actions since entering the Oval Office for the second time last year.
However, the broader U.S. crypto market structure bill, famously called the CLARITY Act, remains unfinished despite several round of deliberations over the last few months. The House passed the market-structure bill 294-134 on July 17, 2025.
But the Senate failed to advance it on Sept. 15, 2026, with the cloture vote rejected 49-50. A motion to reconsider was entered the same day.
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