BTC Current Affairs Security

Trump's Crypto Office Is Now Empty—and That Should Worry You

2026-10-16

Patrick Witt just walked out the door. He was the last person left running President Trump's digital assets office, and now there isn't one. Third senior crypto official gone in 2026. The President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets is effectively a phone number with no one answering it.

Witt worked for the Department of Defense but got temporarily detailed to the White House, where he ran the crypto council and hammered out negotiations on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act—meant to build the regulatory scaffolding for crypto trading. His temporary gig expired mid-October. White House officials won't name a replacement. Witt announced his move via social media: government work was "the privilege of a lifetime". Now he's heading to the private sector.

This exodus tells you something. David Sacks, the original crypto and AI czar, bailed in March when his service window closed. Harry Jung, Witt's number two, left in July. Witt had stuck around past his own July departure date to finish Clarity Act work—the Georgia National Guard had other ideas—but even that commitment has now expired. The crypto council is running on fumes.

Here's where it gets interesting. In early October, Trump appointed a new AI chief: Jay Clayton, the former SEC chairman and veteran regulator. But when they wrote up his mandate, they dropped cryptocurrency from it. Earlier versions of the role covered both. That's not ambiguous. It's a signal. Digital assets just got demoted, even though White House officials keep insisting crypto remains the president's priority. Actions and words are diverging.

Legislatively, things are stalled. The Clarity Act passed the House over a year ago and died in the Senate last month when a cloture vote failed. The logjam? Stablecoin rules and Trump's personal crypto holdings. Democrats wanted ethics constraints on the president's digital assets. Neither side budged. With Congress breaking for midterm elections, that bill isn't coming back anytime soon.

Then there's the conflict-of-interest question nobody's quite moved past. Bo Hines, Witt's predecessor, left in August 2025 just after Trump signed the stablecoin bill. Investigative work showed Hines kept a stake in Nxum, a consulting firm that pulled $6.3 million in payments from Tether whilst Hines was drafting the GENIUS Act—the stablecoin legislation that directly touched Tether's regulatory future. Hines has since become CEO of Tether's stablecoin division. Draw your own lines.

The administration isn't entirely asleep. The SEC and CFTC—both under Trump appointees—are pushing forward with crypto rulemaking. Witt thanked Paul Atkins (SEC) and Michael Selig (CFTC) in his farewell for advancing crypto innovation through their agencies. So policy work continues, just not from the White House offices anymore.

White House officials tell the press the Clarity Act stays a priority for the president. But no in-house leadership, a stalled bill, and an election year looming? The timeline is murky. The prospects murkier still. That empty chair at the crypto council says more than any press release ever could.

Source & further reading:

Sources