Standing down the crypto cops as the family sold crypto

Editor's note: official records show the enforcement cases were dropped, and reporting documents that a defendant was a major investor in the family's crypto venture, but no official record establishes that value.

Beginning February 2025, the SEC systematically abandoned the crypto-enforcement docket it had built. It dismissed its civil action against Coinbase (Feb. 27), agreed to end the long-running Ripple case (a settlement finalized in 2025, the SEC dropping its appeal and slashing the penalty), and paused then dropped its fraud case against Justice Sun - the Tron founder who had invested $75 million in World Liberty Financial. By its 2026 regulatory agenda the SEC had removed crypto enforcement almost entirely.

On April 7-8, 2025, a DOJ memo ('Ending Regulation by Prosecution') disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and directed prosecutors to stop pursuing crypto exchanges, mixers and wallets for their users' conduct - narrowing digital-asset enforcement to individual fraud and terrorism finance. Together the two agencies dismantled the federal crypto-cop apparatus.

The conflict is the timing and the beneficiary. The same months the enforcement machinery was switched off, the president's family launched and profited from World Liberty Financial (CRY-03), the USD1 stablecoin (CRY-05), and the $TRUMP memecoin (CRY-01) - and one dropped defendant, Justin Sun, was a direct WLF investor. House Financial Services Democrats wrote to SEC Chair Atkins in January 2026 demanding answers about the retreat.

There is also a personal dimension. ProPublica reported that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche personally held roughly $159,000 in cryptocurrency when he signed the April 7, 2025 memorandum, Ending Regulation by Prosecution, that disbanded the department's crypto-enforcement unit, and that his bitcoin appreciated about 34 percent, to roughly $105,881, before he divested. On January 22, 2026 the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Acting Inspector General of the Justice Department alleging a violation of 18 U.S.C. 208, the criminal conflict-of-interest statute. The Justice Department says the matter was flagged, addressed, and cleared in advance, and that the divestment through a family transfer was lawful. This remains a complaint. No investigation has been announced, and no court or inspector general has found a violation.