Trump's Treasury Secretary Bessent Approved, Likely Tackling Taxes Before Crypto

With his U.S. Senate confirmation behind him, Scott Bessent is in place to be the top financial official of President Donald Trump's administration, where he'll be among those fulfilling the crypto directives already set out by the president last week.

Bessent, a billionaire former hedge fund manager, didn't give the crypto sector much to chew on during his nomination hearing earlier this month, but he's a known digital assets enthusiast. His boss, Trump, has already assigned him a spot on the team assigned to marshal the federal government toward a friendly system of oversight.

The Senate voted 68-29 to approve Bessent's nomination Monday evening, and he'll officially join Trump's cabinet when he's sworn in to permanently replace predecessor Janet Yellen. At the center of Trump's agenda is the extension of tax cuts, so that top priority may shove crypto down the list, though the president did include it among his opening salvo of executive orders.

Senator Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Financial Committee, called Bessent "one of the sharpest minds in the global finance industry" before the Monday confirmation, saying "his background and training are tailor-made for this role."

Trump's crypto order will have Bessent's Treasury taking a role on a governmental working group — backed by "individual expertise from leaders in digital assets and digital markets" — to hash out the strategy for U.S. crypto policy. His department is among those who'll owe the White House a report in less than two months on how to modify existing regulations or establish new ones at the Treasury, and the wider group must "recommend regulatory and legislative proposals" within six months.

He'll also be responsible for erasing his predecessor's crypto work that had been directed by former President Joe Biden.

The order also bans work on a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC), which had never progressed beyond the tire-kicking stage in the U.S., despite enthusiastic adoption and testing by other jurisdictions, including China.

As a nominee, the ex-chief of Key Square Group told senators in his confirmation hearing that he saw "no reason" to pursue the idea of a domestic CBDC, further endearing himself to crypto insiders who have been nervous the government might pursue a digital dollar. But he wasn't questioned about crypto policies.

Still, Bessent is no stranger to digital assets. He'd tucked hundreds of thousands of dollars of his personal wealth into a bitcoin BTC$89,703.75 exchange-traded fund (ETF), as noted in his lengthy financial disclosures. Those assets were liquidated when he received Trump's nomination.

At the Treasury, Bessent is also in command of its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that had pursued crypto services with enforcement actions and rulemaking, especially involving so-called mixing services that seek to grant users anonymity by blending their transactions to make it difficult to track them. The Treasury's financial-crimes arm had focused on digital assets as a popular means of transaction in human trafficking and child exploitation.

Bessent's department additionally manages U.S. financial sanctions, which have historically given the federal government reach into overseas activity, such as when it targeted mixer Tornado Cash with sanctions that were recently overturned in federal court.

Read On: Trump Issues Crypto Executive Order to Pave U.S. Digital Assets Path