President Donald Trump’s cryptographic advisor, Bo Hines, left after only months at work, and the next in the row, his deputy, Patrick Witt, will apparently be guiding the political priorities of the industry in Washington, since he still looks for regulations throughout the industry and the institution of a federal crypto stockpile.
Witt shares a remarkably similar story with HIES, both former football stars who played at Yale before looking for law titles and falling short in offers for Congress. Witt had a brief season as a free agent field for the New Orleans Saints after leading the Yale Bulldogs team that Hines later played as an open receiver. Both former athletes closely linked their political careers with Trump in recent years, and Witt will now be the main link of the Trump White House industry, according to their social media profile in X that refers to the title it left.
As executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors on digital assets, Witt amounts to the role without a significant cryptographic environment, although HIES also occupied the role without a past of digital assets.
“We have had the pleasure of working with Patrick throughout the year and we hope it will continue to implement policies that make this global center for cryptographic innovation and development,” said Miller Whitehouse-Levine, CEO of the Solana Policy Institute, in a statement.
When Witt helped present Trump in a demonstration in 2022, he told the crowd that “the government, too often, is the problem.” But the graduate of the Harvard Law Faculty spent some time serving at the federal level and describes himself as a “public servant” in his LinkedIn account.
Witt has some of the basic common curriculum of the DC races: three years in McKinsey & Co., and past periods in the staff management office in Trump’s first presidency and some time in the Department of Defense. But in his native state of Georgia, his political career had not yet found impulse, with a failed commitment to be the State Insurance Commissioner (under the promise of “preventing his insurance from waking up”) and a brief effort to run for Congress.
Although his predecessor in the White House recently celebrated the important victory of the first cryptographic legislation of the United States to establish a law that governs Stablecoins, Hines left an important list of pending tasks. When the Congress returns from its summer vacation, Witt will have to handle progress towards a version of the Senate of the Law of Clarity of the Past Digital Assets Market in the Chamber. Hines had also been closely monitoring the developments in the formation of what the administration calls its Bitcoin strategic reserve: a project in which the industry has been eager to see progress since a Trump order earlier this year began working on it.
“I love this community and everything we have built together,” said Hines in a farewell publication in X, surprising the industry when leaving after less than a year at work. “As I return to the private sector, I hope to continue my support for the cryptographic ecosystem as it thrives here in the United States.”
Witt published that feeling again, but has not yet made clear his own agenda. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments on its promotion.
Trump’s most senior cryptographic policy chief, David Sacks, remains in position.
Read more: Why don’t you have a Bitcoin reserve, not?
