- Bitcoin dominates White House crypto discourse, with 129 mentions in its latest report.
- Cardano barely registers—its logo appears once, with no substantive discussion.
- Coinbase, Chainlink, and Ondo gain visibility through contributions.
The authors of the White House’s crypto report, Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology, pay significant attention to Bitcoin, mentioning it 129 times in total. Though less extensively, it also discusses Ethereum, mentioning the platform 28 times.
But although the report offers a broad overview of the digital asset ecosystem, it tends to avoid mentioning third-generation blockchains like Cardano, which doesn’t even receive a cursory glance.
White House Focuses on Bitcoin
The White House report summarizes the history of crypto adoption and considers key crypto policy debates.
As the first cryptocurrency most people think of, which is increasingly used as an investment asset by individuals and large corporations alike, Bitcoin appears prominently in the report.
Topics covered include the early history of Bitcoin, its role in financial crime, Bitcoin ETFs, and President Trump’s efforts to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve using seized crypto.
While some had hoped for more concrete details on the government’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve plan, the report didn’t provide any additional insight beyond what has already been announced.
Cardano Absent From Crypto Report
Launched in September 2015, Cardano is among a crop of lockchain platforms that aimed to expand upon technological concepts established by Ethereum.
As recently as April this year, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson predicted that Ethereum would die within “ten to fifteen years,” and he has long argued that Cardano is a superior platform. (Hoskinson was one of Ethereum’s original co-founders, but left the project over disagreements with Vitalik Buterin.)
With the exception of a single infographic on page 13, where the Cardano logo is squeezed among over a hundred other crypto brands, the platform is absent from the White House’s report.
Apart from Bitcoin and Ethereum, this is true of most blockchain platforms. However, some projects did receive more attention.
Who Are the Winners of the White House Report?
Among the crypto companies that appear most frequently in the White House report, a few stand out.
The report draws significantly from research and data provided by Coinbase, which features prominently in its footnotes. The reports’ authors appear to have relied on Coinbase Learn as a kind of crypto glossary, and they frequently direct readers to the firm’s educational resources.
As the embodiment of Big Crypto in modern America, it is hardly surprising that Coinbase features so prominently. The company has spent millions of dollars buying access to Washington insiders and has emerged as the single largest crypto lobbying force in the U.S.
However, other companies that won a privileged position in the White House report aren’t such household names.
The authors borrowed a graphic from Chainlink to explain blockchain Oracles. The graphic visualizes Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), which is gaining significant traction among government decision-makers and influential global policy leaders.
Meanwhile, the report highlights Ondo Finance, a subtle but significant snub to rivals like Securitize to explain tokenization.
It would be unwise to read too much into these decisions. Inclusion or exclusion in a largely explanatory government document doesn’t necessarily indicate a political or regulatory preference.
But at the very least, it may suggest which companies have the ears of senior White House officials.
