‘If We Didn’t Have It, China Would’: Trump Expresses Support for US Crypto Industry, Dodges Question About His Personal Holdings

US President Donald Trump on Friday avoided directly commenting on the controversy surrounding his family’s crypto holdings.

At a White House press briefing, Trump was asked if he would consider divesting from his crypto investments in the interest of passing digital asset legislation.

The president weaved through numerous topics in his response.

“Yeah, well it’s a very funny thing, crypto. So I became a fan of crypto, and to me it’s an industry. I view it as an industry, and I’m president, and if we didn’t have it, China would, or somebody else would, but most likely China. China would love to. And we’ve dominated that industry.

It’s a big industry, by the way. In fact, when the stock market went down recently, crypto and Bitcoin, and all of that, went down much less than anybody else as a group. And we’ve created a very powerful industry, and that’s much more important than anything that we invest in. We invest in it, but really, that was an industry that wasn’t doing particularly well.

I got involved with it a couple of years ago before the second term – I got involved before I decided to run. I only decided to run because I saw what was happening and Biden was incompetent and the administration was crooked and incompetent, and I was in Bitcoin then, not knowing if I was going to do it a third time.

So it’s become amazing, I mean the jobs that it produces and I notice more and more you pay in Bitcoin and people are saying it takes a lot of pressure off the dollar, and it’s a great thing for our country, so I don’t care about investing, you know I have kids and they invest in different things, they do believe in it, but I’m president and what I did do there is build an industry that’s very important. And you know if we didn’t have it, China would.”

Earlier this week, US Senator Adam Schiff introduced a new bill that aims to prevent Trump and his family members from enriching themselves via crypto.

The potential legislation, titled the Curbing Officials’ Income and Nondisclosure (COIN) Act, would prohibit the president, vice president, high-ranking executive branch employees, special government employees and members of Congress from issuing, sponsoring or endorsing digital assets.

The ban would last from 180 days prior to an individual’s public services until two years afterward, and it would also extend to officials’ immediate family members.

Trump’s recent financial disclosure with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics indicated he pocketed more than $57.3 million worth of income from the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI).

Income from Trump’s controversial memecoin, Official Trump, wasn’t listed on the disclosure because it was released in 2025.

Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin said earlier this year that political coins represented “vehicles for unlimited political bribery.”

In a February letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of Government Ethics, officials at the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen argued that Trump could be in violation of federal law regulating gifts to government officials.