by Zain Jaffer
An Overton window, named after a deceased public policy scholar named Joseph Overton, is defined as the ideas that the government and the public are willing to say are acceptable [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-opening-of-europes-overton-window/]. Another term is perhaps acceptable political (and socio-economic) discourse.
During the Biden administration, Bitcoin and other crypto digital assets were not acceptable and were in fact persecuted in many ways. This was largely due to a souring of support for this technology after the FTX/Sam Bankman Fried debacle, where before that he had been popular even with Democrat lawmakers, until they found out that much of the donations he gave were stolen from customers [https://www.reuters.com/legal/bankman-fried-used-customer-funds-100-mln-us-political-donations-prosecutors-say-2023-08-14/]. Even former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler used to teach a blockchain and money course at MIT [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/15-s12-blockchain-and-money-fall-2018/resources/session-1-introduction/] but turned mostly against digital assets during his term.
Now the Overton window on digital financial assets has shifted in the US with the January 2025 inauguration of US President Donald Trump. Trump signed an Executive Order creating a working group to study how to implement a national digital financial asset stockpile from those seized by the federal government and banned the implementation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) during this term [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/strengthening-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology/]. In part the Trump EO said, “It is therefore the policy of my Administration to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy.” Unlike a law, an EO can be superceded by subsequent administrations.
Trump’s immediate family, through a company called World Liberty Financial [https://www.worldlibertyfinancial.com/], owns several digital assets and launched memecoins of Trump and Melania respectively. There are some ethical issues involved of course, though in an answer he gave to media, it appears he is divested as required by law though questions remain [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrt_RntlWx0].
In a July keynote [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UxAUryUKXM] at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee Trump said, “If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, [the] United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future.”
It looks like some of the past holdovers are beginning to warm up to it. In a January CNBC side interview, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it.” [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/bank-of-america-ceo-financial-industry-will-embrace-crypto-if-regulators-allow-it.html] Also, the new SEC under their new Chairman Mark Uyeda has just repealed the previous SAB 121 rule that disallowed banks from taking custody of customer cryptocurrencies [https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/trumps-sec-rescinds-sab-121-requirement-for-crypto-disclosures-3828579].
With the new Overton window shifting towards legal acceptance and even American leadership, it appears that with responsible stewards onboard, the digital financial assets industry stands a real chance of really gaining global scale and acceptance.
###