Three crypto policy chiefs in eight months — that's the turnover rate at the White House lately, and the seat is empty again. On October 14, Patrick Witt's temporary assignment as executive director of the President's Council of Advisers for Digital Assets expired, and no one has been named to replace him.
Witt wasn't a crypto industry veteran. He came on loan from the Pentagon, detailed to the White House on a temporary basis. He was originally supposed to leave back in July for Georgia National Guard training, but the training got pushed back, stretching his tenure by several months while he worked to close out negotiations on crypto market-structure legislation. That assignment has now formally ended.
He's the third senior official to exit this post within a year. AI and crypto adviser David Sacks left in March after hitting the 130-day cap allowed for special government employees. Council deputy director Harry Jung followed at the end of July. Right now, there's no publicly named leader running crypto policy inside the White House at all.
The vacancy lands just as the bill Witt spent most of his tenure pushing has stalled. The CLARITY Act, meant to divide oversight of digital assets between the SEC and CFTC, failed a Senate procedural vote on September 15 — 49 votes, eleven short of the 60 needed. Sticking points include stablecoin rewards, DeFi oversight, anti-money-laundering rules, and ethics restrictions on officials who hold crypto themselves.
Industry groups gave Witt a respectful send-off, without pretending the job is done. The Blockchain Association credited him with bringing parties "to the negotiating table and keeping them there," while Solana Policy Institute president Kristin Smith called building consensus on market structure no small task on its own. The bill still didn't pass, though — meaning whoever takes the job next effectively starts the negotiation over.
