LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Establishing a clear and pro-innovation regulatory framework for the crypto industry via a market structure bill is a priority for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, Vice President J.D. Vance said Wednesday.
Speaking to a massive crowd at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, Vance said that a regulatory framework is necessary to fully incorporate cryptocurrency into the mainstream U.S. economy, as well as to prevent future governments from rolling back the Trump administration’s crypto-friendly policies.
“I hope that our party is in charge for a long time, but nothing is ever guaranteed in politics. So the best way to ensure that crypto is part of the mainstream economy is through a market structure bill that champions and doesn’t restrict the extraordinary value that bitcoin and other digital assets represent,” Vance said at the event, which organizers said drew about 35,000 attendees. “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unleash innovation and use it to improve the lives of countless American citizens, but if we fail to create regulatory clarity now, we risk chasing this $3 trillion industry offshore in search of a friendlier jurisdiction, and President Trump is going to fight to fight to make sure that does not happen.”
Vance said the Trump administration is hopeful that the GENIUS Act, the Senate’s stablecoin bill, will hit the president’s desk soon, allowing Congress to turn its attention to a market structure bill.
He also said that the administration continues to work to “clean up the wreckage that the [Biden] administration left us,” including the so-called “regulation by enforcement” approach to crypto practiced by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under then-Chair Gary Gensler, and the widespread debanking of crypto companies, dubbed by the industry as Operation Chokepoint 2.0.
“Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is dead and it’s not coming back under the Trump administration,” Vance said. “We reject the Biden administration’s legacy of death by a thousand enforcement actions… We fired Gary Gensler, and we’re gonna fire everybody like him,” he added, though Gensler resigned the day Trump was sworn in
Vance thanked the crypto industry, including Gemini’s Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Coinbase, for their early support of Trump’s campaign, attributing some of its success — as well as the successful elections of other crypto-friendly politicians like Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) — to the crypto industry’s political support.
“Take the momentum of your political involvement in 2024 and carry it forward into 2026 and beyond,” Vance said.
In addition to urging the industry to stay involved in U.S. politics, Vance asked bitcoiners to stay abreast of developments in artificial intelligence (AI).
“Remember that what happens in AI is very much going to affect, in good and bad ways, what happens to bitcoin and, of course, what happens to bitcoin is very much going to affect what happens in AI,” Vance said, adding:
“Make sure you’re keeping tabs on and staying involved in what’s happening in artificial intelligence. I don’t want America to be negatively affected by what’s happening in AI, and the best way to ensure that smart people are at the AI conversation is to ensure that Bitcoin is part of the artificial intelligence conversation.”
