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

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

Blanche’s promotion has many implications, including some for crypto. The former federal prosecutor initiated a number of pro-industry reforms at the Justice Department 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 worried some privacy and decentralization advocates.

When Blanche joined the federal government last year, he was… revealed a significant amount of crypto ownership. The acting attorney general reported that he owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Bitcoin, as well as between $50,000 and $100,000 in Ethereum. He also reported smaller holdings of numerous altcoins, including Solana, Cardano, Ethereum Classic, Polygon and Polkadot. The crypto tokens were all held through a Coinbase account.

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

Within weeks of becoming the Justice Department’s second-highest official last year, Blanche disbanded the agency’s crypto-dedicated enforcement team. He too instructed federal prosecutors must withdraw from crypto exchanges and crypto-mixing services relied on by criminal actors and hostile states like North Korea and Iran.

“The previous administration used the Department of Justice to pursue a reckless strategy of regulation through prosecution that was poorly conceived and poorly executed,” Blanche said at the time.

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

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

When the Trump DOJ sued another Ethereum developer last year for creating similar software, a Manhattan jury convicted the man, Roman Storm, of operating an illegal money transmitter but deadlocked on two other charges. Last month, federal prosecutors led by Blanche and Bondi moved try again Storm on these two charges.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of crypto policy think tank Coin Center, recently told Declutter 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 policy will change with Blanche’s move to the top department leadership. But that policy may not have been solely tied to the now deposed Bondi. In December, in response to a question from DeclutterPresident Trump said he would “look into” pardons for the crypto software developers convicted by his Justice Department. Such pardons have not occurred since.