The architect of the Justice Department's landmark crypto enforcement memo is now in charge of the agency. Todd Blanche, who authored the 2025 directive that disbanded the DOJ's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and halted regulatory-violation prosecutions against the industry, was named Interim Attorney General on Thursday. His appointment places the author of the policy that has already reshaped active crypto cases at the helm of the institution responsible for executing it.

What the DOJ Crypto Enforcement Memo Actually Does – and Why Todd Blanche Authorship Changes the Calculus

The memo Blanche signed last April did two things simultaneously: it eliminated the DOJ’s dedicated crypto prosecution unit and it narrowed the prosecutorial mandate to fraud and clear criminal conduct, pulling back from the Biden-era framework that treated regulatory non-compliance as a criminal predicate.

The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, formed in 2022, had been the institutional infrastructure for that broader approach.

Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche before moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration.…

The document’s downstream effects were immediate. In the SDNY’s case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, prosecutors referenced the DOJ memo before dropping one charge against Storm – a direct application of the new enforcement philosophy to an active DeFi regulation case.

Storm was later convicted on a separate charge and faces retrial on two more, but the memo’s influence on prosecutorial discretion is already on the record.

Blanche’s elevation to interim Attorney General doesn’t change the memo’s text. It does remove any institutional uncertainty about whether it would survive a leadership transition. The man who wrote the policy now sets DOJ priorities at the highest level.

Blanche as Interim AG – What Shifts for DeFi, Mixing Services, and Offshore Platforms

The immediate enforcement implication is continuity, not escalation. DOJ under Blanche is unlikely to reopen the regulatory-violation runway the memo closed. That matters most for DeFi protocols operating under uncertain legal status and for mixing services that had been in the crosshairs of the prior enforcement framework.

What’s less settled is the ethics exposure Blanche carries into the role. ProPublica reported that Blanche held crypto assets worth between $159,000 and $485,000 at the time he signed the enforcement memo – a potential violation of his divestiture pledge.

His most recent government ethics disclosure shows he subsequently transferred holdings in Bitcoin, Solana, ADA, Ethereum, Polygon, DOT, and Quant to his children and grandchild. That timeline is now a liability, not a footnote.

For exchanges navigating jurisdiction-specific compliance – the kind of localized licensing pressure seen as platforms push into regulated U.S. markets – the Blanche appointment signals that federal enforcement will remain restrained even as state-level regulators operate independently. The divergence between federal pullback and active state enforcement is the tension that defines this moment.

CBS News reported expectations of a prolonged interim tenure, citing Senate confirmation challenges for a permanent AG. Trump praised Blanche on Truth Social as “a very talented and respected legal mind”; Blanche responded 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 Blanche’s enforcement reset depends heavily on whether Congress codifies the regulatory boundaries the memo only sketched – and whether his ethics exposure becomes a confirmation obstacle before that happens.