President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets on Thursday, charged with delivering a unified federal approach to crypto regulation within 180 days. The order explicitly prohibits the Federal Reserve and other federal agencies from issuing or developing a U.S. central bank digital currency, codifying a position that had been a significant political flashpoint during the 2024 campaign.
The order is among the most pro-crypto executive actions in U.S. history. It reverses key elements of the Biden-era Executive Order 14067 on digital asset oversight, which had directed federal agencies to study a potential U.S. CBDC and to coordinate on "responsible development of digital assets" — language that crypto-industry critics had read as code for a tighter regulatory perimeter. The Trump order replaces that posture with a directive to "promote and protect the sovereignty of the U.S. dollar through actions including promoting the development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins."
The Working Group is chaired by the President's special advisor for digital asset policy and includes the secretaries of the Treasury, the SEC and CFTC chairs, the chairman of the National Economic Council, the assistant to the president for economic policy, and the attorney general. Its mandate is broad: to deliver a written report within 180 days containing recommendations on stablecoin regulation, market-structure legislation, banking access for crypto firms, the legal status of digital assets under federal commodity and securities law, and the management of federal cryptocurrency holdings. The order directs each component agency to coordinate with the Working Group rather than acting unilaterally during the report-development period.
Industry reaction was strongly positive. Coinbase, Circle, Kraken, and the Blockchain Association issued near-identical statements within hours of the signing, framing the order as a "fundamental reset of the regulatory environment." The American Bankers Association's response was more measured, welcoming the CBDC prohibition while flagging continued concerns about competitive dynamics between bank-issued stablecoins and non-bank issuers. Critics from consumer-protection advocacy groups argued that the order's sweeping pro-industry framing risked undermining existing investor-protection authorities, although the order's operative text leaves agencies' statutory authorities intact.
The broader implication is that the order created the institutional architecture for the comprehensive regulatory shift that subsequently produced the GENIUS Act, the SEC's enforcement-priority retreat, and a series of OCC and FDIC interpretive letters loosening banking-access constraints on crypto firms. The Working Group's recommendations directly informed the GENIUS Act's drafting, with several of its mid-cycle deliverables — including guidance on banking access — already producing concrete regulatory changes at the OCC. The order's institutional design, with the Working Group operating as a coordinating body across agencies that retain their underlying statutory authorities, has held up under several months of operation.
The Working Group's full final report is due in mid-2025 and is expected to be the structural roadmap for the remainder of the administration's digital-asset agenda. Several specific deliverables — most notably the report's treatment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, of foreign-issuer treatment under the GENIUS Act, and of the still-open jurisdictional questions between the SEC and CFTC — are being closely watched. The next public milestone is the publication of the Working Group's interim memorandum, expected before the end of the first quarter, which is likely to set the agenda for the legislative work that follows.