What one hour ago was looking like another positive day in markets has turned decidedly negative as the latest economic data fueled growing stagflation fears.

First up was ADP jobs numbers for April. Coming two days ahead of the government’s own employment data for April, the ADP report showed just 62,000 private sector jobs created this month, well shy of estimates for 108,000 and March’s 147,000. It was the weakest print since July 2024.

Next was the government’s first estimate of first quarter GDP growth, which came in at negative 0.3% against estimates for positive 0.2%. While the quarter ended in March, economic actors — fully aware of coming tariffs — front-loaded imports early in the year. Going back to Econ 101, rising imports (absent a corresponding gain in exports) are a drag on GDP growth.

Indeed, the export-import imbalance cut GDP growth by nearly 5% in the first quarter. Also at work was the Trump administration’s DOGE efforts, with government spending a drag on GDP for the first time since 2022.

Turning to inflation, the Core PCE price index embedded within the GDP report rose 3.5% versus estimates for a gain of just 3.1%.

It’s all adding up to a big drop in U.S. stocks, with the Nasdaq lower 2% and S&P 500 by 1.5%. That’s hitting bitcoin (BTC), which has slipped about 1% alongside to $94,300.

Strategists for two U.S. bills meant to create an oversight regime for crypto are setting out plans this week to pass legislation in the summer, Bo Hines, the White House official at the center of those efforts, told CoinDesk.

Hines, who President Donald Trump hired as executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, told CoinDesk in an interview that the procedures are being ironed out to move legislation on regulating stablecoin issuers, and the crypto advocates in the White House and Congress will quickly pivot to the bigger bill that will set a full regulatory regime for U.S. crypto markets.

The progress so far puts the efforts «well on pace to achieve what the President desires,» he said, which is that both crypto bills reach Trump’s desk for signatures before Congress takes its summer recess in August.

The president’s adviser, who is a speaker at Consensus 2025 in Toronto May 14-16, said the bills to regulate stablecoin issuers that are moving through the Senate and House of Representatives are «90% aligned,» so it won’t be a difficult task to bring them together into a unified approach that would still need approval in both chambers.»We’re in the process of mitigating any differences between the two chambers there, but we feel like, you know, we’re in a really good spot to get that passed and signed into law,» he said. «It lays the foundation for everything that we can do.»

He said the more complex undertaking to write laws for how the U.S. should police the overall markets should emerge in draft bills «in the next few weeks.»

Trump’s business

While Congress is moving unusually fast, the president’s own crypto business interests have been criticized by Democrats who accuse Trump of improperly benefiting from his own policies and of inviting foreign influence from investors in his family’s projects. Trump’s interests include stakes in World Liberty Financial and the president’s own memecoin, $TRUMP. Hines pushed back, saying the rise of crypto has presented attractive innovations for investors.

«Any good business person would engage in a marketplace opportunity like that,» he said. «So, you know, I don’t view it as being detrimental in any capacity whatsoever.»

The president and his family have the «ability to engage with any marketplace that they see fit,» Hines said.

«We’re narrowly focused on just doing what’s in the best interest of the United States to make the U.S. the crypto capital world, usher in the golden age of digital assets, and we have our binders on to everything else,» he said. «That’s what the president’s asked us to do, and we’re going to deliver on his wishes.»

The White House official, 29, is known as a staunch loyalist to Trump, who had endorsed the former college football player in the first of his two unsuccessful North Carolina congressional campaigns. Despite his relative inexperience in the crypto field, Trump elevated Hines to a senior White House role to work beside crypto czar David Sacks and act as a «sherpa between White House policy, interagency activity, industry and what’s happening on Capitol Hill,» as Hines described it.

«We move at a speed that no other administration has ever been able to move before,» Hines noted.

Bitcoin reserve

Many in the digital assets industry had clamored for a digital assets reserve at the federal level, though the idea for how to approach it varies widely. Trump’s campaign-trail promises surged toward reality in March when he ordered his administration to start work on a bitcoin (BTC) reserve and a separate stockpile of other crypto assets.

One point of disappointment for those who’d wished for it was that Trump insisted the reserve be budget-neutral, meaning no new taxpayer money would go toward acquiring assets for the reserve.

Hines has been a prominent booster of this effort. He said the Treasury-led audit of U.S. crypto holdings, which needs to be done to find out the extent of assets (so far unmeasured) that’ll be directed into the stockpiles, is progressing quickly. The Treasury Department is now going through audit reports from various corners of the U.S. government, he said.

Trump had directed his administration to work out ideas for how to add even more to the funds without tapping taxpayers, and Hines said they’re still «fleshing out the best ideas.»

«I don’t think there’s going to be one single resolution where we say, ‘This is the path that we’re going.’ I think there could be multiple ways in which we engage in this,» Hines said, «We view bitcoin as digital gold, and we want to accumulate as much as we can.»

He didn’t have a timeline in mind for when the first tokens will begin stacking up as a longterm U.S. government investment.

Diverse views

The transition from President Joe Biden to Trump’s administration has been stark for the industry — until recently a target of government suspicion and now celebrated as an innovative movement that should be fostered. Already, regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission have reversed policies and started crypto roundtables behind doors that had been largely closed to digital assets discussions. And Trump himself held a crypto summit in the room of the White House where state dinners are hosted.

«We move at a speed that no other administration has ever been able to move before,» Hines noted.

Hines said he’s had as many as 200 meetings with crypto insiders in his short stint in the government, and he granted that their opinions can range widely. But he thinks the industry is largely aligned where it needs to be as Congress and regulators are considering its U.S. future.

When asked about some industry concerns about splitting the crypto legislation into two rather than a combined, single effort to improve its odds, he said details could still be worked out, though he’s currently focused on a stablecoin bill being quickly followed by market-structure legislation.

The crypto push, which he said «some will portray as being a chaotic process,» looks that way because that’s always the case in government policymaking «when you’re attempting to effectuate change.»

«We’re talking about revolutionizing a financial marketplace which has basically been archaic for the last three decades,» he said. «I just think that people should be very excited about what’s to come.»

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2733.26, down 2.0% (-57.08) since 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

One of 20 assets is trading higher.

Leaders: POL (+0.2%) and BTC (-0.6%).

Laggards: AAVE (-4.7%) and XRP (-4.0%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.