Crypto industry executives are combing through US President Donald Trump’s National Cyber Strategy after it was released on Friday, searching for hints about what it could signal for government support of the crypto industry.

“Crypto and blockchain are explicitly named as technologies to be 'protected and secured.’ This is a first for any US cybersecurity strategy,” Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research Alex Thorn said in an X post on Friday.

Crypto and blockchain were mentioned once in the six-page report:

“We will build secure technologies and supply chains that protect user privacy from design to deployment, including supporting the security of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.”

However, industry executives have also been interpreting other parts of the document to see how they relate to crypto.

Thorn pointed to a section pledging to “uproot criminal infrastructure and deny financial exit and safe haven.” “This language could easily justify crackdowns on mixers, privacy coins, and unregulated off-ramps,” he said.

Venture capitalist highlights quantum computing reference

Castle Island Ventures founder Nic Carter, who has been vocal about the threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin

“Sure seems like they're taking quantum seriously. Nothing to worry about, I'm sure,” Carter said on X.

The comments come as the crypto industry continues debating how close quantum computing is. On Feb. 15, Carter said that major Bitcoin-holding institutions may eventually lose patience with Bitcoin developers for not addressing quantum computing concerns quickly enough.

Trump points to the next generation as a priority

Trump said that the National Cyber Security outlines his priorities for “ensuring that America remains unrivaled in cyberspace.” Artificial intelligence was a key focus of the report.

“We will secure the AI technology stack—including our data centers—and promote innovation in AI security,” it said.

Related: Community banks and crypto industry ‘are allies’ in CLARITY Act debate: Exec

Trump also emphasized the importance of recruiting the next generation of workers in the cyber workforce to “design and deploy exquisite cyber technologies and solutions.”

The US typically releases a national cybersecurity strategy every administration, outlining the government’s priorities for emerging technologies.

Magazine: The debate over Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is over: Benjamin Cowen

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A crypto executive has pushed back against claims by the president of a community banking association that any compromise between the banking sector and the crypto industry on the US CLARITY Act would be a mistake.

“If community banks and crypto can't find a way to work together, we already know who the winners are. It's not the community banks. It's not consumers. It's not the crypto industry,” Zero Knowledge Consulting founder Austin Campbell said in an X post on Friday.

“It is the big banks,” Campbell said.

“There is a very straight line between the value community banks bring,” he said, explaining that they face technological and regulatory issues that can be solved by stablecoins.

The major banks “have tricked both sides”

“These are not enemies,” Campbell said of stablecoin-yield providers and community banks, adding that “they are allies.”

“The big banks and the bank lobbies they fund have tricked both sides into fighting each other so that the ultimate winner is Jamie Dimon's bonus,” he said. 

Campbell’s comments came in response to Independent Bankers Association of Texas president Christopher Williston, who said that making concessions in the CLARITY Act debate would risk harming local lending and economic production.

“It's simply impossible to roll over in the fight for liquidity that powers the economies of the places we call home,” he said.

Banking lobby groups have argued that if the CLARITY Act passes in its current form, stablecoins could siphon deposits from the banking system. Major US bank Standard Chartered recently estimated in a research note that increasing stablecoin adoption could lead to US bank deposits decreasing “by one-third of stablecoin market cap.”

The debate has also drawn comments from the Trump family this week.

Eric Trump, the son of US President Donald Trump, said in an X post on Thursday that large banks are not acting in the best interests of US citizens. “Big Banks (think JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) are lobbying overtime to block Americans from getting higher yields on their savings.”

Donald Trump urges for the bill “ASAP”

US President Donald Trump also criticized banks for stalling the Senate’s crypto market-structure bill amid ongoing disagreements over stablecoin yield payments.

Related: Revolut makes second attempt at US bank charter, names new CEO for US business

“The U.S. needs to get Market Structure done, ASAP,” Trump said. “The Banks are hitting record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto Agenda,” he added.

Magazine: The debate over Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is over: Benjamin Cowen

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Public institutions are under pressure to modernize faster than their systems were built to handle. In its recent report, New Tech, New Partners: Transforming development in the digital era, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) outlines a model for using blockchains as part of a broader effort to modernize public systems. The publication showcases over 40 pilot projects around the world that apply blockchain technology to improve transparency, speed and accountability of public systems. This ranges from payment infrastructure and social safety nets to climate finance and community-level funding mechanisms, enabled by fundraising platforms, wallets and digital certificates. 

The UNDP uses a pipeline model, which creates purpose-built partnerships that bring governments, blockchain startups and local companies together to solve public sector problems. Institutions get an opportunity to test new tools through small, problem-led initiatives and specific use cases. These tools are implemented on a local level and designed to solve specific problems, such as inefficient payment rails for micro-entrepreneurs or regional ESG control.

In its framework, UNDP treats blockchains as a trusted ledger for coordination and verification. The ability of blockchains to support shared records, traceable transactions and rule-based processes across multiple actors makes them a useful tool for governmental systems. UNDP also makes clear that these benefits are conditional. Poor governance, weak privacy protections and flawed technical design can create serious risks, such as defects in smart contracts or Illicit use of payment systems. The report reaches a pragmatic conclusion: Blockchain can be useful, but only when institutional safeguards are built in from the start and the technology is adopted responsibly with robust oversight.

Central to UNDP's approach is a commitment to platform-agnostic ways of working, which ensures that no single provider or protocol creates new dependencies, and that the digital infrastructure being built today remains open, interoperable, and genuinely in service of people and public purpose.

The report showcases how blockchains can be used to make public institutions more efficient and transparent, with examples from more than 40 countries across payments, financial access, identity systems and climate-related programs. Examples include projects such as crypto wallets for informal business payments, the use of eco-credit tokens and more. The cases also show how digital tools can help institutions extend services in developing nations, where trust is limited and infrastructure is fragmented.

Explore the full UNDP report to see the complete framework, lessons and portfolio of use cases.

Canada has completed a pilot program testing the use of distributed ledger technology in bond markets, culminating in the issuance of the country’s first tokenized bond, according to a Friday announcement from the Bank of Canada.

The project, known as Project Samara, involved the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and TD Bank Group, and explored if blockchain-style infrastructure could streamline bond issuance, trading and settlement.

As part of the pilot, Export Development Canada issued a $100 million Canadian dollar ($73.6 million) bond with a maturity of less than three months to a closed group of investors. The security was issued, traded and settled on a distributed ledger platform, with payments processed using wholesale central bank deposits rather than commercial bank money.

The platform, built on Hyperledger Fabric, let participants manage the full lifecycle of the security, including issuance, bidding, coupon payments, redemption and secondary trading, while integrating separate ledgers for cash and bonds to enable near-instant settlement.

The pilot highlighted trade-offs in adopting distributed ledger systems for capital markets. Participants reported improvements in operations and data integrity, but also identified governance, regulatory and integration challenges.

Researchers said the results showed distributed ledger systems could improve settlement efficiency and reduce counterparty risk, though broader adoption may be slowed by infrastructure and regulatory hurdles.

Related: Vancouver Bitcoin reserve effort hits resistance from city officials

Tokenized bonds gain traction among governments and banks

Canada’s pilot program adds to a growing list of experiments by governments and financial institutions that explore how blockchain-based systems can reshape the issuance and settlement of traditional financial assets.

An early example came in 2018, when the World Bank issued a two-year A$110 million “Bond-i” debt instrument arranged by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The issuance is widely considered the first bond whose creation, allocation and lifecycle management were recorded on a blockchain.

In 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore launched Project Guardian to study how distributed ledger technology could be used in wholesale financial markets. Early industry pilots explored decentralized finance applications for lending and borrowing tokenized bonds and deposits on public blockchains.

In 2023, Hong Kong issued a tokenized green bond using distributed ledger infrastructure, with the issuance facilitated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The program was expanded with additional digital bond offerings in 2024 and 2025.

The World Bank issued a Swiss franc digital bond on the SIX Digital Exchange in 2024 with settlement using wholesale central bank digital currency provided by the Swiss National Bank.

Magazine: Clarity Act risks repeat of Europe’s mistakes, crypto lawyer warns

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