Trump’s New Attorney General Held Bitcoin—But Has a Mixed Crypto Track Record

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche directed his staff last year to lay off crypto developers—but also oversaw their continued prosecution.

In brief

• Todd Blanche was elevated to lead the Department of Justice this week after the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
• As deputy attorney general, Blanche pushed pro-crypto reforms, like shuttering the DOJ's crypto-dedicated unit.
• But he has also overseen the continued prosecutions of crypto software developers.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump fired his attorney general, Pam Bondi—and elevated her deputy, Todd Blanche, to run the Department of Justice. Trump suggested the promotion was temporary, but reports suggest the president is waiting to see how Blanche, his former personal attorney, performs in the new role.

Blanche’s promotion has many implications, including some for crypto. The former federal prosecutor instigated a number of pro-industry reforms at the Department of Justice last year, and is a crypto investor himself.

But under his and Bondi’s leadership, U.S. attorneys have also continued to aggressively pursue cases against crypto software developers—a development that has left some privacy and decentralization advocates worried.

When Blanche entered the federal government last year, he disclosed a significant amount of crypto holdings. The acting attorney general reported owning between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of Bitcoin, as well as between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of Ethereum. He also reported smaller holdings of numerous altcoins, including Solana, Cardano, Ethereum Classic, Polygon, and Polkadot. The crypto tokens were all held via a Coinbase account.

Blanche said in a subsequent ethics filing that he later transferred those crypto assets to his adult children and a grandchild.

Within weeks of becoming the Department of Justice’s second-highest ranking official last year, Blanche disbanded the office’s crypto-dedicated enforcement team. He also instructed federal prosecutors to back off of crypto exchanges and crypto mixing services relied upon by criminal actors and enemy states like North Korea and Iran.

“The prior Administration used the Justice Department to pursue a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed,” Blanche said at the time.

Echoing that stance, a top DOJ official told a room of crypto policy leaders months later that the Trump administration would stop charging crypto software developers with a specific crime related to operating an unlicensed money transmitter.

But the great relief expressed by crypto leaders at that commitment was short-lived. Last fall, the Trump DOJ sent two Bitcoin privacy software developers to prison for operating an illegal money transmitter.

When the Trump DOJ took another Ethereum developer to trial for creating similar software last year, a Manhattan jury convicted the man, Roman Storm, of operating an illegal money transmitter—but deadlocked on two other charges. Last month, under Blanche and Bondi’s leadership, federal prosecutors moved to retry Storm on those two charges.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, the executive director of crypto policy think tank Coin Center, recently told Decrypt that the Trump DOJ’s seemingly inconsistent combination of pro-crypto statements and continued prosecution of crypto developers has left the industry in “a very bad state.”

It remains to be seen whether the DOJ’s crypto policies will change with Blanche’s move to the top of the department’s leadership. But those policies may not have been tied solely to the now-ousted Bondi. In December, in response to a question from Decrypt, President Trump said he would “look at” pardons for the crypto software developers convicted by his Justice Department. No such pardons have since materialized. 

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