White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett owned between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in the cryptocurrency giant. coinbase In late 2025, when President Donald Trump’s administration rapidly rewrote federal cryptocurrency policy.
Hassett’s previously unreported annual financial disclosure for 2025 lists the investment as a vested Coinbase stock. He previously worked as an advisor to the company. The filing shows that Trump had not fully exited the company nearly 11 months into President Trump’s second term. The filing, recently made public, only covers 2025 and does not indicate whether Hassett still holds any shares.
Three days after taking office in 2025, President Trump established the Presidential Task Force on Digital Asset Markets within NEC. His executive order included Hassett’s appointment to a White House position and membership, and called for the group’s final recommendations to reach Trump through Hassett’s office.
The group, chaired by then-White House cryptocurrency advisor David Sachs, went on to propose sweeping regulatory changes to digital asset markets, banking, stablecoins, and the tax system. The administration also reversed Biden-era crypto policies, created a government Bitcoin reserve, and pushed Congress toward a broader federal regulatory framework.
Hassett, who served as an advisor to Coinbase from 2021 to January 2025 before taking the White House, said he did not get involved in cryptocurrency issues while ethics officials were referring to his investments.
The White House declined to answer CNBC’s questions about whether Hassett still owns the stock or whether it prevents him from working on issues within the office’s purview.
When CNBC asked about the stock in June 2025, Hassett said he didn’t sell it because he didn’t want to give the impression that he was timing the sale. He said he was receiving guidance from “ethics officials” to determine “what to do.”
“During that time, I stepped back from anything related to cryptocurrencies,” Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The White House indicated in response to CNBC’s questions about new financial disclosures that the denials continue.
“Kevin Hassett has been, and will continue to be, fully compliant with all ethical requirements from the beginning, including abstaining from all crypto-related matters,” White House Press Secretary Khush Desai told CNBC in a statement.
One ethics expert said these holdings raise questions about whether Mr. Hassett’s Coinbase stock potentially overlapped with his official duties, and whether managing these conflicts through evasion removed one of President Trump’s top economic advisers from a key policy priority of the council he leads.
“I think he has or suspects he has a significant conflict of interest,” said Virginia Cantor, chief counsel and ethics and anti-corruption director at the Fund for Democracy Defense.
What remains unclear is what the resignation actually means: which meetings, decisions and policy discussions Mr. Hassett avoided, and how much it affected his work as an NEC director.
The Cryptocurrency Working Group’s final report lists Robin Colwell, the deputy assistant to the president for national economic policy, as the NEC’s representative, not Hassett.
But Canter, a former ethics attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said there are only so many things a recusal can do. If Hassett’s shunning was widespread across cryptocurrencies, she said, he could be sidelined from key parts of his job, such as coordinating economic policy across government agencies such as the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. All of these institutions were representatives of the Cryptocurrency Working Group.
“Cryptocurrency was a major initiative of the Trump administration,” Canter said. “Did[Mr. Hassett]not consider anything about cryptocurrencies? Did he not participate in any meetings with the administration regarding policy? Did everyone know not to talk about cryptocurrencies around him? I doubt it.”
Cryptocurrency has also become a major source of personal income for President Trump during his second term. Trump reported earning more than $1.4 billion in 2025 from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures, including through Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial.
Meanwhile, Coinbase, whose stock price has plummeted since Trump returned to office, plays a key role in helping the industry push through a new federal regulatory framework.
Just over a month into President Trump’s term, the SEC dismissed an enforcement case against Coinbase with prejudice. This means that the same claim cannot be brought again. The SEC said the move was intended to facilitate a broader review of crypto regulation and was not based on an evaluation of the merits of a 2023 lawsuit that accused Coinbase of operating an unregistered securities exchange and failing to properly register a crypto staking program.
Coinbase is also a major financial backer of the FairShake Super PAC and its affiliates during the 2024 elections, with the crypto group continuing to spend heavily ahead of this year’s midterm elections as the industry presses Congress to pass new digital asset rules.
Coinbase has pledged an additional $25 million in spending ahead of this year’s midterm elections, as the crypto industry presses Congress to pass new digital asset rules.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has repeatedly met with President Trump and other White House officials. He attended President Trump’s White House Crypto Summit in March 2025, met privately with President Trump in March of this year, and returned to the White House in August when President Trump pressed Congress to pass the Clarity Act.
That push is still active. Armstrong told CNBC on Thursday that the transparency bill is “ready for a yes vote” ahead of a key Senate vote scheduled for Sept. 15. Even if the bill fails, he said, SEC and CFTC rulemaking would provide more regulatory clarity for the industry.
“We’re going to try to clarify the regulations in some way,” Armstrong said.
