Three months in: Bo Hines on quarterbacking the White House’s crypto strategy

Former congressional candidate and ex-football player Bo Hines, who traded playbooks for policy briefs, is now three months into his rookie season as one of the White House’s top crypto leads.

Hines, who works with White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, was tapped by President Donald Trump in December to run the crypto council. 

"I view our role, specifically my office, as being like an administrator and/or sherpa between White House policy, industry, interagency activity and what's happening on Capitol Hill," said Hines, executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, in an interview with The Block. Since starting the job, Hines said he has met with 150 different people in the crypto industry, big and small. 

The Trump administration's rollout is markedly different from that of the Biden administration, which took a more wary approach to the crypto industry. Just a few days into his presidency in January, Trump issued an executive order "Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology," which included a number of measures , including creating a working group tasked with developing a federal regulatory framework, and also looking to ban the use of a central bank digital currency. 

Trump has also tapped crypto-friendly leaders to run key agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That regulator has been instrumental in bringing charges against big crypto firms as its former chair, Gary Gensler, denounced the industry for being "rife with bad actors." 

Last month, Trump hosted a crypto summit at the White House, attended by big industry players, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi. 

Another summit could be incoming, Hines said. 

The White House is kicking around different ideas of how to do future summits, potentially dividing them into "sub-vertical summits," Hines said, such as ones focused on exchanges and another on miners. 

'Bitcoin is the grandfather'

Last month, Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve and establish a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile. 

The two terms — stockpile and reserve — have several differences and have sparked some confusion . The bitcoin reserve would be made up of bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited, Sacks previously said, adding that the U.S. won't sell any bitcoin deposited into the reserve. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are also authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers, Sacks said.

"We created them (a bitcoin reserve and crypto stockpile) separately for a reason and that reason is because bitcoin is unique," Hines said. "Bitcoin is the grandfather."

Meanwhile, according to the executive order, the stockpile consists of crypto other than bitcoin that was forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings. 

"We also wanted to give credence to the other ecosystems that are continuing to develop and build incredible things in the space and that's why we created the digital assets national stockpile because we believe in that innovation and we want them to continue to build across this ecosystem," Hines said.

On the Hill 

As Trump and regulators move forward on executive orders and a new approach to overseeing crypto, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are quickly moving to advance legislation to regulate stablecoins and later adopt a whole-of-market approach. 

On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee voted to advance a monumental stablecoin bill with 32 in favor and 17 opposed. The bill, named STABLE, had a few Democratic supporters, including Reps. Ritchie Torres, Josh Gottheimer and Sam Liccardo. 

Lawmakers are next working on a crypto market structure bill, with a hearing scheduled for next week. Trump has said he wants to sign stablecoin legislation before August, and Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said Trump is also interested in having a market structure bill passed as soon as possible.

"I think that (bipartisanship) will continue to expand and I think that we're well on our way to delivering on the President's wishes to get both of these pieces of legislation on his desk before August recess," Hines said. 

Democrats and top House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, R-Ark., however, have raised concerns over Trump's involvement in crypto. The Trump family has been involved with a DeFi protocol under development, as well as live and tradable memecoins and NFTs. On Monday, the Trump family also announced its new Bitcoin mining interests.

That engagement "in the memecoin activity and in considering the formation of a stablecoin have made our work more complicated," Hill said on Monday . 

Top Democrat of the House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters of California, has opposed the stablecoin bill. 

"With this stablecoin bill, this committee is setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent, validating the president and his insiders' efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else," Waters said during Wednesday's hearing.

Hines declined to comment on the record about criticism of Trump and his family's involvement in crypto.

Football - crypto

Hines became interested in crypto when he played football in the 2014 Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl for North Carolina State during his freshman year in college. He bought bitcoin shortly afterwards and became a "pretty avid trader." 

When asked if there were similarities between crypto and football, Hines noted a team dynamic between the two. 

"There is a team dynamic that persists right now as it relates to the industry," he said. "Regardless of what vertical you're operating within and/or what you're trying to accomplish in the space, these actors have faced a lot of headwinds."

"In the grand scheme of things, I think that more generally, it's just been a lot of fun for me to watch the industry come together and really fight for their technology."