The Department of Justice dismantled its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team to focus on targeting drug cartels and terrorist organizations that use digital assets to carry out crimes. 

In a memo sent to employees Monday evening, DOJ Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that “effective immediately,” the department would slash NCET, which he described as a “reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution” left over from the Biden era. Blanche cited a Jan. 23 executive order issued by President Donald Trump that called for the government to promote “the ability of individual citizens and private-sector entities alike to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution” as the basis for the overhaul.

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Blanche wrote that the DOJ “will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and offline wallets for the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.” 

Instead, the agency will prioritize investigating “individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing,” Blanche continued in the agency-wide memo. 

The department’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit will cease all cryptocurrency enforcement efforts as part of the latest order. 

The disbandment of cryptocurrency oversight at the DOJ comes as Trump has embraced the industry, signing a flurry of executive orders beneficial to the financial system, including one establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile through the Treasury Department.

“The president has made this a priority, and it is a testament to his leadership and his knowledge in the space,” Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, told Fox News Digital this week. “Unlike any president before him, he has truly embraced this technological development in a way that no one else has, which has allowed us to do what we need to do to make the United States the crypto capital of the world.” 

In March, Trump became the first president to address a cryptocurrency conference, during which he called for the United States to become a “Bitcoin superpower” and the “crypto capital of the world.” The same month, Trump held the first-ever White House crypto summit, where he reassured cryptocurrency industry leaders that his administration would work to help legitimize the burgeoning financial system that had been largely sidelined during the Biden administration. 

“They strong-armed banks into closing the accounts of crypto businesses and entrepreneurs, effectively blocking some money transfers to and from exchanges, and they weaponized government against the entire industry,” Trump said. “But I know that feeling also, maybe better than you do. All of that will soon be over, and we are ending Operation Chokepoint 2.0.”

Eric Trump recently argued that the financial establishment has weaponized itself against crypto because the novel market offers a banking alternative to consumers who feel targeted by major banks for political reasons. 

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“The weaponization is real, and it has to stop,” the president’s son said. “You can’t have banks pick who they’re going to lend to, who they’re going to service the United States of America based on their political affiliation. We were targeted, and we’re going to hold those banks accountable, but it’s what made me find crypto, and it’s what made me find it so alluring. And again, there’s nothing that crypto can’t do better. There’s nothing that DeFi, and CeFi and Bitcoin and blockchain can’t do better than these major financial institutions, and they’re going to have a rude awakening if they don’t wake up.”