It was a position that didn’t exist before, filled by someone who had never been in government before, but when US President Donald Trump opened a new crypto advisor position at the White House, he tapped a former college football star and future politician to serve as the first executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets.
This feature is part of CoinDesk 2025 Most Influential List.
Bo Hines, who was known for his time as a wide receiver at North Carolina State University and Yale before some unsuccessful congressional bids, has taken on a very different role as a sort of cheerleader for Trump’s pro-crypto policy efforts. He helped David Sacks, the President’s crypto czar, advance various initiatives, including the crypto industry’s biggest U.S. policy success to date: the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for American Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act to regulate U.S. stablecoin issuers.
Although he also worked on federal Bitcoin, not yet realized. reserve and on legislation to establish regulations for the broader crypto industry that is still being considered in the U.S. Senate, the GENIUS Act was the highlight of his tenure in the White House.
Hines and his allies were able to move the bill relatively quickly through the Senate, securing an overwhelming bipartisan vote and a correspondingly quick approval from the House of Representatives. He was able to celebrate with the president when Trump signed the bill, marking a major accomplishment for his administration.
After this victory, Hines hung up his hat in the White House and accepted the position of US general manager of Tether, the stablecoin giant which, in light of the GENIUS Act, aimed to fully penetrate the US market. Hines was replaced by Patrick Witt, a former McKinsey & Co. executive who also played for the same Yale Bulldogs as a quarterback, and he took over the same agenda items Hines had worked on.
