The Night Before Power Reshuffle: Political Signals from Davos and Industry Resilience in the Crypto World

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Original author: Sandy Carter, Forbes

Original compilation: Saoirse, Foresight News

A scene from Donald Trump's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2020. Photo: Fabrice Kovrini / AFP

Donald Trump will travel to Davos next week.

The World Economic Forum is in a critical period of intertwining and colliding with technology, policy, national competitiveness and financial infrastructure. The appearance will be Trump's first visit to Davos in six years, and at the same time, the organizers said that the largest number of U.S. participants in this forum is the largest in history, including senior U.S. cabinet officials and large U.S. corporate delegations.

This year, Davos will also usher in the official return of the American Pavilion. This U.S.-centered physical venue will become an important base for U.S. policy discussions and business exchanges in the region. I am honored to be invited to speak at the American Pavilion this year. This move fully demonstrates that both the U.S. government and U.S. companies attach great importance to the 2026 Davos Forum as an important platform for exerting influence and exchanging core views.

It is worth noting that on the eve of the Davos forum, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, one of the most influential executives in the cryptocurrency space, refused to support a proposed cryptocurrency bill - despite widespread political interest in pushing it through this year. Together, these two events reveal a profound shift in the interaction patterns between power, policy, technology, and cryptocurrencies.

Trump tried to upgrade Davos from “concept discussion” to “institutional building”

I have participated in the Davos Forum many times, and this year's forum gave people a completely different feeling in tone and substance. With heads of state, cabinet officials, and hundreds of CEOs in attendance, the central topic of the forum has shifted to decision-making at the infrastructure level. The forum is expected to attract around 3,000 participants from 130 countries, including a record number of political leaders and corporate CEOs.

The changes in the field of artificial intelligence are particularly significant. This shift will be reflected in the agenda of the “AI House” in Davos next week – the conference positions AI as a “shared infrastructure” and discusses core topics such as “power and responsibility”, “governance at scale” and “how intelligent systems can augment rather than replace human decision-making”.

Today, artificial intelligence is no longer regarded as an “emerging technology” but as an infrastructure as important as energy, supply chains, and national competitiveness. From the perspective of the topic setting of the “Agent Artificial Intelligence Pavilion”, as intelligent technology extends from the “tool level” to the “decision-making system level”, governance issues such as “trust, accountability and control” caused by autonomous artificial intelligence agents will become the focus of discussion. Today, policymakers are discussing “computing power and artificial intelligence access rights” as hotly as they did in the past.

The discussion among business executives focused on “how to build a solid foundation for the future of organizations built in different economic eras”. In this context, “system durability” is far more important than “speed of development”, and the core question has shifted to “which systems will remain critical ten years from now”.

“Systems thinking” is also applicable in the field of digital finance

This “systems thinking” is increasingly penetrating into the digital finance field.

Today, stablecoins have billions of dollars in daily settlement transactions, especially in cross-border payments and fund management businesses. At the same time, “tokenization” is quietly penetrating the capital market, extending its coverage from fund products to various real-world assets.

Cryptocurrencies have officially moved from the “experimental stage” to the “financial infrastructure sector”. In 2025, the Davos Web3 Center signed the Web3 Davos Declaration, clearly supporting the four core principles of “responsible innovation, sustainable development, accountability, and trust”, and will further strengthen the dissemination and implementation of this concept in 2026.

Trump's core signal on “power and digital finance”

Trump's appearance in Davos injected political influence into this transformation process. For a long time, his economic propositions have always revolved around “sovereignty, influence and competitiveness”, and cryptocurrencies happen to be at the intersection of these three dimensions.

On the one hand, digital assets are expected to achieve “faster settlement speed, new capital formation models and efficiency improvements”, which is highly consistent with the policy agenda of “promoting growth”; On the other hand, digital assets have also raised concerns in areas such as sanctions enforcement, financial regulation, and the long-term status of the US dollar. Although Davos is not a “legislative venue”, it is a key platform for “policy prioritization transmission” - the positioning and interpretation of cryptocurrencies in the forum will have an important impact on the market and regulators.

The return of the U.S. Pavilion further confirms this: the United States does not see Davos as a “neutral backdrop,” but as a strategic platform to “shape the narrative of technology, capital, and influence.”

Brian Armstrong's “Opposition Position”

In this context, according to Reuters, Armstrong's refusal to support the cryptocurrency bill reflects the maturation of the cryptocurrency industry. With the passage of the CLARITY Act, there has been a fundamental shift in industry expectations for regulation. For nearly a decade, leaders in the cryptocurrency space have been advocating that “any clear regulation is better than no regulation”; Today, this position has changed as industry risks continue to rise.

Brian Armstrong has made it clear that he is against crypto legislation. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

Armstrong's concerns can be summarized in three core points:

The bill will “artificially divide wins and losers”: the bill clearly favors large incumbents and centralized intermediaries, potentially excluding start-ups and open networks that drive innovation in the industry;

Increasing the compliance burden without improving clarity: The bill does not clearly define the operating rules of cryptocurrency products, but instead adds a series of obligation clauses, which not only fails to reduce legal uncertainty, but may also exacerbate risks;

Weakening the core advantages of “decentralization”: Key provisions in the bill will promote the development of the crypto ecosystem in a “highly centralized” direction, undermining the “resilience architecture” and “global interoperability” on which cryptocurrencies depend, and may lead to the outflow of innovation resources or the risk of long-term market concentration.

Armstrong's position is not “simply against regulation”, but “emphasizes the scientific and rigorous nature of regulation”. As cryptocurrencies become the core infrastructure, poorly designed regulatory policies can lead to issues such as “fragile system solidification”, “innovation resource outflow”, or “long-term concentration risk”.

Trump, Armstrong and the “competition for the underlying rules of the economy”

There is a direct correlation between Trump's trip to Davos and Armstrong's rejection of the bill: Trump tried to convey “the United States' competitive strategy in a technology-driven global economy” through the Davos Forum; Armstrong, on the other hand, used the legislative process to resist unreasonable rules that “may prematurely lock in the future shape of digital finance.”

Today, the core of this field is no longer “hype or experimentation”, but “who can control the core system on which the economy operates”. The key issue now is “how to control the underlying rules of the modern economy” - with Trump's trip to Davos, this battle has entered the political arena.