When Donald Trump hosted the first-ever White House crypto summit in March, he was surrounded by some of his top advisors in the elegant State Dining Room. To his right at the cloth-draped table was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and to his left was his crypto and AI czar, venture capital heavyweight David Sacks. But next to Sacks was a figure who had been unknown to nearly everyone in the room until just a few months before: Bo Hines, a 29-year-old former congressional candidate and college wide receiver who had helped one of the Trump campaign’s top affiliated super PACs with advertising. Trump has tapped Hines to spearhead a radical effort to create crypto-friendly regulation and roll back the Biden administration’s crackdown on the industry.
In the months since his appointment, Hines has become a mini-celebrity in the crypto world—with CEOs and billionaire investors vying for appointments on his calendar, and lobbyists jostling for face time. In the first 30 days after becoming executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, Hines had met with more than 50 crypto lobbyists, investors, company founders, agency officials, and bankers, according to his calendar, obtained by Fortune via a Freedom of Information Act request. He’s sat down with Chris Dixon and Marc Andreessen of top Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz; Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of crypto company Ripple; and Bank of New York Mellon’s digital assets chief Caroline Butler.
