The wheels are already beginning to turn on Donald Trump’s plan to make the US into the “crypto capital of the planet” following his return to the White House.

In an executive order signed Thursday, Trump established a “working group on digital asset markets,” which will be responsible for weighing the possibility of the US forming a “strategic national digital asset stockpile,” among other things.

The promise to establish a stockpile was one of numerous commitments made by Trump to the crypto industry before he was reelected. Though the idea stumped economists, it received a rapturous reception among bitcoiners. As rumors of an impending announcement spread Thursday, the price of bitcoin climbed to $105,000 per coin, just short of the record high.

The order also requires the working group—which will comprise the leaders of various government branches, financial regulatory bodies, and the attorney general—to come up with an appropriate set of regulations and laws governing the use of crypto.

Earlier in the week, on Trump’s second day in office, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) —the US regulatory body that brought a volley of lawsuits against crypto firms under the Joe Biden administration—established a “crypto task force.” Under new leadership following the departure of former chair Gary Gensler, who was widely demonized in the cryptosphere, the SEC will develop a “comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets,” the agency stated.

Later the same day, Trump granted clemency to Ross Ulbricht, who was serving life in prison for crimes committed while running the infamous darknet marketplace Silk Road, one of the first websites to accept bitcoin as payment. After being arrested in 2013, Ulbricht became something of a martyr in crypto circles for his part in spreading the bitcoin gospel.

These initial gestures signal Trump’s willingness to follow through on earlier campaign promises: to pass various crypto-related legislation, reform the financial regulatory apparatus in the US, and knit crypto into the US national treasury. The effects will be extensive, crypto figures believe, reverberating far beyond US shores and creating the conditions for a new golden era for the industry.

“Our technology is very powerful and transformative. We need to land it in different societies,” says Joseph Lubin, cofounder of Ethereum and chief executive at software company Consensys. “And America is a standard-setter for the rest of the world.”

Despite having previously spurned bitcoin as a “scam,” Trump now has extensive ties to the crypto industry, many high-profile members of which came out in support of his reelection campaign.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, crypto organizations donated hundreds of millions of dollars to crypto-focused super political action committees, which spent the funds in support of crypto-friendly congressional candidates, many of them Republican.

On the campaign trail, Trump began to bill himself as the first “crypto president.” In July, in front of a rabid crowd of bitcoiners, Trump promised to turn the US into a crypto mining powerhouse and establish a national bitcoin stockpile if reelected. In the same speech, he pledged to fire Gensler, the SEC chair, prompting the most rapturous applause of the night.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling foul on President Donald Trump’s meme coin, pressing for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and financial regulatory agencies to dig into the ethical and regulatory details around the $TRUMP token.

Warren, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee that oversees U.S. financial regulators, says the assets, including First Lady Melania Trump’s own eponymous meme coin, pose conflict-of-interest hazards for the president and highlight the most destructive and volatile corner of the crypto sector.

“Nearly overnight, President Trump and his wife’s net worth skyrocketed to $58 billion,” Warren wrote in the letter alongside Representative Jake Auchincloss, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Anyone, including the leaders of hostile nations, can covertly buy these coins, raising the specter of uninhibited and untraceable foreign influence over the President of the United States, all while President Trump’s supporters are left to shoulder the risk of investing in $TRUMP and $MELANIA.”

Launched the Friday before his inauguration this week, Trump’s token — for which his company retains some 80% of the coins in circulation — rose rapidly from about $3 last week to almost $37 on Thursday. It’s opened a possibility for Trump to make “extraordinary profits off his presidency,” the lawmakers noted.

The letter was sent to the Treasury Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — each of which now has a new Trump pick at the helm. Warren and Auchincloss raised the point that Trump is in charge of appointing the permanent heads of these regulatory agencies that will make decisions affecting the future of his crypto tokens.

None of the three federal agencies immediately responded to CoinDesk’s requests for comment on the letter, or whether they’re reviewing the tokens in any other capacity.

“$TRUMP and $MELANIA present grave risks to President Trump’s ability to impartially govern our nation — and to investors in these coins, who may be made victims of a rug pull scheme orchestrated by the Trump family,” Warren’s letter concluded.

The lawmakers join other Democrats who have similarly raised concerns about Trump issuing these assets right before taking office. Representative Gerry Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, called for an investigation in a letter sent to his committee’s Republican chairman one day into Trump’s new term, additionally raising issues with World Liberty Financial and its ties to Tron blockchain founder Justin Sun. And Representative Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, also shared her alarm about Trump’s coin.

Read More: House Dems Warn of Corruption in Trump’s Crypto Business Moves

Though Nintendo can technically claim it had the first big gaming news event of the year, at least Xbox’s Developer Direct actually showed off some games and let us know when we can play them. The showcase was anchored by deep dives into the biggest games coming down the green pipe like Doom: The Dark Ages and Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, with a couple of surprises to fill out the nearly one-hour-long runtime. Here are the highlights from the show.

Xbox kicked off the Direct with the surprise reveal of Ninja Gaiden 4. The game is being codeveloped by Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and Bayonetta studio PlatinumGames. Ninja Gaiden 4 revives the series’ bloody, fast-paced combat and high-stakes (but often frustrating) platforming with a new face, the ninja Yakumo. Yakumo will use his unique fighting styles to defeat the Divine Dragon Order that’s turned Tokyo into a dystopian, crumbling mess. Gaiden’s former protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, will also make an appearance as a playable character and Yakumo’s rival.

Ninja Gaiden 4 will launch in the fall of this year, but if you don’t want to wait for your bloody ninja action, you don’t have to. Xbox stealth dropped Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a remake of Ninja Gaiden II, and it’s available right now on Xbox and Game Pass.

The developers at Compulsion Games went into detail about South of Midnight’s gameplay and story. You play as Hazel who must use her powers as a Weaver, fighting monsters and traversing the haunted landscape, to rescue her mother who gets swept away in a hurricane. With this, everything I’ve seen about South of Midnight makes it seem like it’ll be one of my games of the year. It’s got a Black protagonist, features characters and tropes that harken to Southern gothic folklore, and its stop-motion art style makes it immediately stand out. I cannot wait to get my hands on this game when it releases on April 8th.

Sandfall Interactive was founded in Montpellier, France, in 2020 with a team led by former Ubisoft developers. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the studio’s first game — a turn-based RPG with a compelling narrative hook. The world has been ravaged by a being known as the Paintress. Every year, she writes down a number, and everyone older than that number disappears. Expeditions are sent out to stop the Paintress, and the game will follow Expedition 33 in their attempt to save humanity. In addition to an interesting Persona 5-style take on turn-based combat, Expedition 33 features some serious voice acting talent, starring Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr, and Andy Serkis. Can’t wait to hear them perform when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launches on April 24th.

To close out the Direct, Xbox gave us another look at Doom: The Dark Ages, the prequel to id Software’s 2016 Doom reboot and Doom Eternal. It will, of course, feature all the ripping and tearing a Doom enjoyer could want, along with an interesting focus on narrative — something the series isn’t really known for. But I suspect folks are far more interested in piloting a 30-story Doomguy-shaped mech suit when the game releases on May 15th.

For three days Donald Trump dominated Davos from a distance.

On the fourth, he did it in person, albeit virtually, with a speech that took his threats of economic conflict with Europe directly to its political leaders.

Beamed from the White House to the World Economic Forum, he delivered a message of total confidence in American might, and a direct challenge to those that do not play along.

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Initially, he stuck to the inauguration script and his domestic program but, teed up by a question from his Mar-a-Lago neighbour and former adviser Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, he let rip.

Mr Schwarzman identified a theme of this week, frustration at EU regulation among businesses, and the president took full advantage.

He criticised taxes on American companies, and what he sees as a trade imbalance. “They don’t take our food, they don’t take our cars, but they send us cars by the million.”

EU demands for $15bn in back taxes from Apple, as well as investigations into Google and Facebook, were also slammed. “These companies, like them or not, these are American companies.

“Nobody’s happy with it and we are going to do something about it. I’m trying to be constructive, I love Europe, but they treat the US very unfairly.”

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His counter-offer to the businesses listening; corporation tax of just 15% for companies that shift their manufacturing to the US, and tariffs for those that don’t, a position that would inevitably bring retaliation.

In the audience, the heads of the European Central Bank, the World Trade Association, the International Money Fund and sundry cabinet ministers and central bankers, shifted in their seats.

As if to emphasise what Europe is up against, Mr Trump cited a $600bn investment promised by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and suggested “he round it up to a trillion”.

Having parked metaphorical tanks on chancellery lawns, he offered some hope, but not detail, on how he might address the real ones rolling across Ukraine.

Referring to “millions of dead bodies lying on the flat fields” he said efforts to secure peace “should be under way”. Asked when that might happen, he said the answer lay with Russia. “Ukraine is ready.”

Having started the week guessing what Trump 2.0 might mean, Davos’ delegates, that unique mix of money, power, civil society and celebrity, leave the Alps under no illusion of the disruption ahead.

JetBrains, the company behind coding tools like the IntelliJ IDE for Java and Kotlin (and, indeed, the Kotlin language itself), on Thursday launched Junie, a new AI coding agent. This agent, the company says, will be able to handle routine development tasks for when you want to create new applications — and understand the context of existing projects you may want to extend with new features.

Using the well-regarded SWEBench Verified benchmark of 500 common developer tasks, Junie is able to solve 53.6% of them on a single run. Not too long ago, that would have been the top score, but it’s worth noting that at this point, the top-performing models score more than 60%, with Weights & Biases “Programmer O1 crosscheck5” currently leading the pack with a score of 64.6%. JetBrains itself calls Junie’s score “promising.”

But even with a lower score, JetBrains’ service may have an advantage because of its tight integration with the rest of the JetBrains IDE. The company notes that even as Junie helps developers get their work done, the human is always in control, even when delegating tasks to the agent.

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Donald Trump says he was “saved by God to make America great again”. Yet the best rebuttal to his presidency so far has come from a priest — the Episcopal bishop of Washington.

The Rt Rev Mariann Budde’s sermon on Tuesday went where business leaders and even Democratic politicians have struggled to go. While Trump sat a few metres away in the congregation, she asked him to show mercy to gay, lesbian and transgender people and to immigrants who are “scared” by his policies.

“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land,” Budde said at the service. It wasn’t a fleeting rebuke to Trumpism; it was an eloquent 15-minute argument for a different politics.

Trump sat there, fidgeting then fuming in the National Cathedral. His vice-president JD Vance, a Catholic, dissented by whispering to his wife. Perhaps they weren’t expecting it. Because at the inauguration the previous day, they were given a very different religious reception.

Preachers described Trump’s return as a “miracle”. One pastor, Lorenzo Sewell, invoked Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in his honour.

In 2023, the charismatic Sewell was locked out of his Detroit church because its constitution had been changed and he was able to disenfranchise rank-and-file members. Shortly after the inauguration, he launched a crypto token, telling X users: “I need you to go buy the official Lorenzo Sewell coin.” The currency’s price then quickly plunged more than 90 per cent.

Who represents the Christian view of Trump? Is it Sewell with his pro-Trump, pro-prosperity talk of self-reliance, or the liberal Budde, who wants to speak for the marginalised? And, if Christianity can encompass both outcomes, is it much use for understanding and confronting Trump?

Budde backed up her address with references in the Bible. She is in line with Pope Francis, who has criticised Trump’s planned mass deportations of immigrants as a “disgrace”.

In contrast, pro-Trump spirituality often seems to rely on taking words from their context. Sewell stripped King’s dream of its intended meaning. (As for Sewell’s oratory, let me just say: the phrase “Free at last” is not meant to sum up what the audience feels when you stop talking.)

Or take the conflation of Christianity and growth. Another conservative speaker at the inauguration, Rabbi Ari Berman, suggested that George Washington had called faith and morality indispensable to “American prosperity”. In fact, Washington said they were essential to “political prosperity”. The context, back in 1796, was an appeal for national unity, and a warning not to trust in “the absolute power of an individual”. Trump would have fidgeted through that speech, too.

But pro-Trump pastors are accepted as a valid part of the church like any other. And the pews are with the president, too. According to Michael Emerson, a researcher on religion, practising Christians are now heavily Republican, because liberal Protestants and Catholics have disproportionately stopped going to church.

Last year Trump won around 60 per cent of the Christian vote, and more than 80 per cent of white evangelicals. He paid hush money to a porn star, has pledged to veto any federal abortion ban and he did not seem to place his hand on the Bible at the inauguration. But some white evangelicals see him as a useful vessel, someone who will allow them to steer the conversation.

Ironically, having invoked God multiple times in his inaugural address, Trump complained that Budde’s sermon had mixed politics and religion. One thing Sewell and Budde agree on is that you can’t keep politics out of Christianity. If the church decides simply to bless whoever is in power, it ends up compromised.

The question becomes: is religion downstream from politics? Will Trump’s supporters simply retrofit their faith on to their preferred politics, and his opponents do the opposite? The answer is probably: mostly, but not always. Surely there’s no point in listening to a preacher if you don’t think they’ll ever change your mind.

“When we know what is true, it’s incumbent upon us to speak the truth even when, especially when, it costs us,” Budde said. Her achievement shouldn’t be measured in how many people attend her next service. It should be measured in how many other people feel a duty to speak out against what they know is wrong.

henry.mance@ft.com