Donald Trump has been branded a pro-crypto president, thanks to his administration’s passage of crypto legislation. However, some industry observers say his personal stake in the future of crypto—via companies the Trump family has backed—has stood in the way of progress, and threatens to cause further backlash once he leaves office.
Danny Ryan, co-founder of institutional marketing firm Etherealize and a former Ethereum developer, told Decrypt recently that this threat of retaliation from a new administration is why the industry must make as much progress as possible before Trump leaves office.
“If, during this window, we significantly onboard financial institutions, global capital, and capital markets, it’s not going to be this binary conversation of: Should it exist? Should it not?” Ryan explained. “We can get into a position where we can show the fundamental value to the world. It’ll be critical infrastructure.”
At that point, if the next administration wants to take aim at the crypto industry, Ryan hopes that it’ll no longer be about whether crypto should exist, but rather how it should be used responsibly as a “tool.” But to do so, the industry must move quickly during this window of opportunity.
“Maybe we can de-politicize it a little bit. Maybe we can show that it’s a useful tool and valuable,” Ryan told Decrypt during the ETH Capital Summit in Argentina. “Not just embedded so much they can’t rip it out. Maybe it’ll just be [like] the internet. It’s like: Yeah, we’re not getting rid of the internet—we rely on it.”
The July signing of the GENIUS Act into law was a landmark victory for the crypto industry, as the legislation created a legal framework for issuing stablecoins.
However, its path to passing was rocky, due to anger amongst Democrats over Trump’s perceived conflicts of interest—so much so that House Democrats walked out of a digital assets-focused hearing in protest, in an attempt to get wording into the GENIUS Act that would prevent Trump from engaging in personal crypto ventures while in office.
President Trump issued an officially licensed meme coin just days before he was inaugurated in January. His wife, First Lady Melania Trump, also followed suit two days later. Trump later hosted a dinner for the top holders of his meme coin, which attracted protesters outside, while senators called it an “orgy of corruption.”
Similarly, President Trump and his three sons co-founded World Liberty Financial, which issued a dollar-pegged stablecoin and is expected to roll out more crypto products. Eric Trump confirmed in October that his family had already profited north of $1 billion from crypto ventures.
Political unrest stemming from these ventures has bubbled up during Etherealize’s attempts to help crypto regulations pass. When Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, testified before Congress for the CLARITY Act, the firm noted that not everyone’s focus was on the topic at hand—rather, Democrats were concerned about Trump’s conflicts of interest.
“I think [the perceived conflicts do] not help further the cause,” Ryan told Decrypt. “It was palpable. Some of the Democrats during this testimony—they did ask interesting and valuable questions. Most of them, by and large, didn’t. Even the ones that did were clearly timid, because they were moving into a fraught political thing.”
Being aware of this tension is why Ryan joined Etherealize. He explained that after being served by the SEC, while he was still working at the Ethereum Foundation, he considered quitting crypto.
However, watching Trump launch a meme coin, he noticed the pendulum had swung hard in favor of crypto and wanted to dedicate himself to making the most of it. Etherealize is a firm that aims to help onboard traditional financial institutions into the world of crypto.
That said, he’s aware that the administration after Trump may want to throw the book at the former president and his signature moves, meaning the crypto industry could become collateral damage. Ryan hopes the industry has proven itself as valuable enough that not all progress is lost amid a potential changing of the tides to come.
“They might try to re-sculpt it, but it’s going to be much more like carving some of the edges, rather than like making it disappear entirely,” Ryan told Decrypt. “But the political sphere is fucking wild. I can’t claim to predict the future.”