Trump Skips the Word Crypto at White House Cybercrime Roundtable
At a White House cybercrime roundtable billed as a push against foreign crypto scams, Trump and Attorney General Todd Blanche never said "cryptocurrency," even as Trump faces scrutiny over his family's crypto ventures.
Pre-event reporting billed it as a push against foreign networks luring Americans into fraudulent crypto investments. Yet at the White House cybercrime roundtable President Donald Trump hosted on Wednesday, neither "cryptocurrency" nor "digital assets" was explicitly said.
Trump told the room that "countless" Americans lost more than $20 billion to cybercrime in 2025 through impersonation schemes, ransomware attacks, scam centers and other methods. He said federal officials had frozen $1 billion in "cybercurrency tied to foreign scammers" and prevented $1.6 billion in losses in 2025, following a March executive order. "Cybercurrency" is a dated term for cryptocurrency.
Attorney General Todd Blanche also avoided the words "cryptocurrency" and "digital assets." Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin referred only to "digital extortion." A White House photo from the event shows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump and Blanche speaking. Ahead of the event, a White House official had told Reuters that Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Hegseth and Blanche were expected to attend.
The agenda was expected to include the government's seizure of fraudulent crypto investment websites and efforts to stop online impersonation scams. The White House has a live page tied to the event.
The data behind the push
Americans filed more than a million internet scam complaints with the FBI last year, a 17% increase from 2024, and those complainants reported the highest losses, according to an FBI report. The FBI put 2025 scam losses tied to digital assets, including crypto ATMs, at $11 billion.
The self-enrichment backdrop
The administration's scam crackdown arrives while it faces scrutiny over alleged self-enrichment through digital assets. Accounts of Trump's 2025 crypto income differ. His annual financial disclosure shows that most of the $2.2 billion he made last year came from digital currencies, including about $600 million from World Liberty Financial and $636 million from Trump-branded meme coins. A separate account puts the net from his crypto ventures at $1.4 billion.
Public Citizen estimates that investors in crypto ventures tied to Trump and his family are at least $4.7 billion underwater since 2022, mostly on unrealized losses. The TRUMP meme coin accounts for about $3.2 billion of that, and WLFI investors are at least $1 billion underwater. Public Citizen also notes that Trump's stakes sit in a revocable trust where he is the sole donor and beneficiary and his eldest son is the sole trustee.
TRUMP has fallen more than 97% from its $73 all-time high in January 2025. On Wednesday it traded at about $1.82, up more than 7% over 24 hours.
World Liberty Financial faces its own scrutiny: its USD1 stablecoin was used to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance by an entity tied to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The TRUMP meme coin project is hosting another tokenholder dinner on Nov. 22. Earlier dinners drew "pay-to-play" accusations from lawmakers and interest groups, and in August Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal asked SEC Chair Paul Atkins to investigate the token, suggesting it may have allowed fraud or unfairly enriched people.
Critics such as John Oliver have accused Trump of giving investors White House access in exchange for money put into his crypto businesses. Trump has defended the earnings, saying there was nothing illegal or wrong about them. The White House says neither he nor his family have engaged or will engage in conflicts of interest.
What it means
For market participants, the vocabulary is worth noting. Officials described crypto-linked fraud as "cybercurrency" and "digital extortion" rather than naming the asset class directly. The figures offer a yardstick: the $1 billion frozen is a fraction of the $11 billion the FBI attributes to digital-asset scam losses in 2025. How the administration reconciles that enforcement push with the President's personal crypto holdings is likely to remain a live question as the Nov. 22 dinner approaches.
