White House digital-asset report maps a federal crypto overhaul

The President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets released a government-wide cryptocurrency policy roadmap on July 30, 2025, recommending that Congress give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority over spot markets for non-security digital assets and that federal regulators move more quickly within their existing powers.

The report, titled *Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology*, was the working group’s response to Executive Order 14178, signed on January 23, 2025. It addressed market structure, banking, stablecoins and payments, taxation, illicit finance, decentralized finance and other institutional questions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the report’s launch that it contained more than 100 proposed regulatory and legislative actions.

Its importance was directional rather than immediately operative. The report did not enact legislation, transfer jurisdiction, approve a trading platform or create a safe harbor. Instead, it assigned policy work to Congress and agencies whose authority and procedures remained legally distinct.

A proposed division of market authority

The central market-structure recommendation was that Congress authorize the CFTC to regulate spot markets for digital assets that were not securities. The working group endorsed the House-passed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 as a foundation and proposed that regulated platforms be able to offer multiple business lines through efficient licensing structures.

The report separately urged the Securities and Exchange Commission and CFTC to use authority they already possessed to clarify registration, custody, trading and recordkeeping. It suggested safe harbors or regulatory sandboxes, provided those programs had clear eligibility standards and a route into ordinary regulation.

That distinction mattered on July 30. A recommendation that Congress enlarge the CFTC’s jurisdiction acknowledged that the agency did not yet possess the complete spot-market authority contemplated by the report. Agency guidance or rulemaking could address existing mandates, but could not substitute for every requested statutory change.

The report also recommended coordination between the two market regulators, customer-asset segregation rules and market-data reporting for venues trading non-security digital assets. These were proposed elements of a future framework, not requirements that became effective when the document appeared.

Banking, stablecoins and tax joined the agenda

The working group asked banking regulators to clarify permissible activities involving custody, tokenization, stablecoin issuance and blockchain networks. It also sought greater transparency around bank-charter and Federal Reserve master-account applications and argued that capital requirements should reflect an activity’s actual risks rather than the mere use of distributed-ledger technology.

For dollar-backed stablecoins, the report called for Treasury and banking agencies to implement the GENIUS Act, which had become law on July 18, 2025. It also recommended legislation codifying the administration’s opposition to a U.S. central bank digital currency. The report did not itself issue a stablecoin license, establish implementing regulations or alter the legal status of any existing token.

Tax recommendations included Treasury and Internal Revenue Service guidance on wrapping transactions and small digital-asset receipts, a review of mining and staking guidance, and congressional legislation applying modified securities- or commodities-style tax rules to a distinct digital-asset class. The working group also proposed extending wash-sale treatment to digital assets. Those recommendations did not change taxpayers’ obligations on July 30.

Why the roadmap mattered

The document brought questions previously handled across separate enforcement, banking, tax and commodities regimes into one administration policy program. Reuters described the report on July 30 as a call for crypto-specific SEC rules and new legislation, while the CFTC confirmed that it had contributed to the multi-agency work.

For exchanges, custodians, banks and token issuers, the report identified the federal government’s intended direction. For markets, however, it offered no completed regulatory framework and no assurance about which proposals would survive agency procedures or Congress.

No price reaction is asserted in this reconstruction. Bitcoin and other crypto assets trade continuously across venues, and the reviewed records do not provide a controlled instrument-specific event window capable of separating the report from other developments. The verified July 30 event was the release of the federal roadmap—not the later implementation or success of its recommendations.