Todd Blanche Becomes Interim U.S. Attorney General After Writing DOJ Crypto Enforcement Pullback Memo
Todd Blanche has taken over as interim head of the U.S. Department of Justice, and the crypto sector is watching closely for one reason: he authored the department's recent directive that narrowed federal crypto prosecutions.
President Trump said Thursday that Blanche, who had been serving as deputy attorney general, will replace Pam Bondi as Attorney General. The significance for markets is that the architect of the DOJ's crypto enforcement reset now leads the agency responsible for carrying it out.
In April 2025, Blanche signed a four-page memo that disbanded the DOJ's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and instructed prosecutors to step back from cases built primarily on regulatory violations involving crypto firms. The memo has already influenced at least one active matter, reinforcing that the change is not merely theoretical.
Key points
- Who he is: Blanche, previously Trump's personal criminal defense attorney, was confirmed as deputy attorney general in March 2025 and is now interim AG following Bondi's removal.
- What the memo did: The April 2025 DOJ directive dissolved the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and limited prosecutors from pursuing crypto cases centered on regulatory noncompliance.
- Ethics questions: ProPublica reported Blanche held between $159,000 and $485,000 in crypto assets—including BTC, ETH, SOL, and ADA—when he signed the memo, raising concerns about compliance with his divestiture pledge.
- Enforcement scope tested: In the Southern District of New York case involving Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, prosecutors cited the memo when dropping one charge.
- DeFi implications: With Blanche now at the top, the DOJ posture toward DeFi protocols, mixing services, and unhosted wallets is unlikely to tighten in the near term.
- What to watch: Whether Blanche seeks a permanent nomination, and how his interim tenure intersects with pending legislation including FIT21 and the GENIUS Act, will shape how lasting the enforcement pullback proves to be.
What the DOJ crypto memo changed
The April 2025 memo paired two moves: it eliminated the DOJ's dedicated crypto prosecution unit and narrowed the prosecutorial focus to fraud and unmistakable criminal conduct, stepping away from a framework that treated regulatory noncompliance as a basis for criminal charges. The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, launched in 2022, had been central to the broader approach.
The downstream effects were felt quickly. In the SDNY case against Roman Storm, prosecutors referenced the DOJ memo and dropped one charge. Storm was later convicted on a separate charge and faces retrial on two more, but the filing put the memo's influence on prosecutorial discretion on the record.
Blanche's elevation does not alter the text of the memo. It reduces uncertainty about whether the policy would survive a leadership change, since the author now sets DOJ priorities.
What changes for DeFi, mixers, and offshore platforms
The near-term signal is continuity rather than escalation. Under Blanche, the DOJ is not expected to reopen the regulatory-violation pathway the memo shut down—a key point for DeFi projects operating in legal gray areas and for mixing services that were targeted under prior enforcement priorities.
The bigger unresolved issue is ethics exposure. ProPublica reported Blanche held crypto assets worth $159,000 to $485,000 when he signed the directive, potentially conflicting with his divestiture pledge. His latest government ethics filing indicates he later transferred holdings in Bitcoin, Solana, ADA, Ethereum, Polygon, DOT, and Quant to his children and grandchild. That sequence may now carry political and confirmation risk.
For exchanges dealing with jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction compliance, the appointment suggests federal enforcement will remain restrained even as state regulators pursue their own actions. The widening gap between a federal pullback and active state-level enforcement is emerging as a defining tension.
CBS News reported expectations of an extended interim period, citing Senate confirmation headwinds for a permanent AG. Trump praised Blanche on Truth Social as “a very talented and respected legal mind.” Blanche posted on X: “Thank you for the trust and the opportunity to serve.”
With FIT21 and broader crypto market-structure legislation still unresolved in the Senate, the durability of the DOJ's enforcement reset will depend on whether Congress formalizes regulatory boundaries that the memo only outlined—and whether ethics concerns become a barrier before that happens.
