DOJ Axes Crypto Unit as Trump’s Regulatory Pullback Continues

“The Department of Justice is not a integer assets regulator,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said successful the Monday nighttime memo.

Apr 8, 2025, 3:05 p.m.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) axed its crypto portion connected Monday, telling unit that the DOJ would beryllium “narrowing” its crypto enforcement activities successful accordance with U.S. President Donald Trump’s January enforcement bid connected integer assets, which pledged to found “regulatory clarity and certainty” for the crypto industry.

In his four-page memo to unit titled “Ending Regulation by Prosecution,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) — created successful 2022 nether then-President Joe Biden — would beryllium “disbanded effectual immediately.”

“The Department of Justice is not a integer assets regulator,” Blanche wrote successful the memo seen by CoinDesk. “However, the anterior Administration utilized the Justice Department to prosecute a reckless strategy of regularisation by prosecution, which was sick conceived and poorly executed. The Justice Department volition nary longer prosecute litigation oregon enforcement actions that person the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks connected integer assets portion President Trump’s existent regulators bash this enactment extracurricular the punitive transgression justness framework.”

Blanche informed unit that the DOJ would nary longer beryllium pursuing cases against crypto exchanges, mixing services oregon offline wallets “for the acts of their extremity users oregon unwitting violations of regulations.” Staff were ordered not to complaint regulatory violations successful cases involving crypto, including violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), unlicensed wealth transmitting and different violations tied to national securities and commodities laws.

Instead, DOJ unit were ordered to absorption their resources connected “prosecuting individuals who victimize integer plus investors” oregon who usage crypto successful the furtherance of transgression activities similar coercion oregon pack financing.

“Ongoing investigations that are inconsistent with the foregoing should beryllium closed,” Blanche wrote, adding that his bureau volition enactment with the DOJ’s transgression part to “review ongoing cases for consistency with this policy.”

NCET is not the archetypal national crypto task unit to beryllium disbanded since Trump took bureau successful January. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) slashed a fig of specialized enforcement teams, including a crypto-focused team, down to conscionable 2 arsenic portion of Acting Chair Caroline Pham’s program to summation ratio and “stop regularisation by enforcement.”

NCET worked connected galore of the DOJ’s precocious illustration crypto cases successful caller years, including crypto mixer Tornado Cash and respective of its developers and Mango Markets exploiter Avi Eisenberg, who faces sentencing aboriginal this week after being convicted of fraud and marketplace manipulation.

The memo comes a week and a fractional aft Trump pardoned crypto trading level BitMEX and its founders and elder executives pursuing their past blameworthy pleas to Bank Secrecy Act charges.

Cheyenne Ligon

On the quality squad astatine CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses connected crypto regularisation and crime. Cheyenne is primitively from Houston, Texas. She studied governmental subject astatine Tulane University successful Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, wherever she focused connected concern and economics reporting. She has nary important crypto holdings.