This executive order is not a roadmap to innovation. It’s a manifesto for digital authoritarianism dressed up as a defence of liberty. Trump’s so-called commitment to “financial technology” isn’t about empowering everyday Americans — it’s about sabotaging regulatory guardrails, protecting shadow markets, and smothering any effort to ensure public accountability in the next era of money.

Let’s not be fooled: Revoking Executive Order 14067, which called for the responsible development of digital assets, is not a policy shift — it’s a full-blown ideological purge. Why? Because that order asked serious, nuanced questions. It explored the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in a thoughtful, public-facing process. That kind of integrity terrifies Trump. He doesn’t want digital finance that’s secure, transparent, or equitable — he wants a system built to benefit the already powerful, insulated from oversight, and driven by political grievance.

His blanket ban on CBDCs is especially telling. Trump isn’t banning surveillance — he’s banning accountability. A well-designed CBDC could help the unbanked, streamline federal aid, and give the United States monetary tools for stability in a world increasingly moving toward digital currency. But instead of leading, Trump retreats — scorched-earth style — based on conspiracy theories, not economics. His rhetoric of “economic liberty” masks a deeper fear: that a public option in digital finance might undermine private empires built on exploitation, speculation, and opacity.

He says he’s “protecting innovation,” but let’s ask: whose innovation? Not the open-source developers trying to build fairer platforms. Not the regulators trying to prevent another FTX-style implosion. Not the consumers getting fleeced by crypto scams. Trump’s “Working Group” isn’t a think tank — it’s a lobbyist parade, a crypto cheer squad with a badge, formed to dismantle every attempt at balance and oversight.

And what does it say that his executive order elevates a Special Advisor for AI and Crypto but contains no meaningful inclusion of consumer protection advocates, financial inclusion experts, or even climate economists, despite crypto’s well-documented environmental toll? It says the quiet part loud: this isn’t a digital asset policy — it’s a political weapon, designed to reshape financial power in Trump’s image.

He’s not protecting the dollar — he’s weakening the institutions that support it. He’s not defending economic liberty — he’s defending economic chaos, deregulated greed, and a transactional elite that thrives on uncertainty.

This isn’t about America leading the digital financial future. It’s about America unlearning everything it should have learned from the last financial crisis — and doing so with swagger, hubris, and cruelty.

In the end, this executive order isn’t visionary. It’s reactionary. And if we let it define our digital future, we’ll find ourselves not in a free market — but in a free-for-all, governed by wallets, not laws, and ruled by men, not institutions.