After a college football career and 2 failed House races, Bo Hines is helping steer U.S. crypto policy
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Crypto czar David Sacks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets Bo Hines attend the White House Crypto Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Bo Hines has no professional background in crypto. He earned his law degree three years ago from Wake Forest. He’s twice unsuccessfully run for Congress in North Carolina.
Now the 29-year-old former football player is wrapping up his second month as one of the leaders of President Donald Trump’s crypto agenda.
“We’re well on our way in delivering on the President’s promise to welcome in the golden age for digital assets,” Hines told CNBC in an interview this week. “And make the United States the crypto capital of the planet.”
Hines is repeating a high-level message Trump has been uttering since the waning months of his campaign last year, when he became the crypto industry’s clear choice to run the country. Hines is working under former venture capitalist David Sacks, who Trump tapped to be the first White House AI and crypto czar.
Hines said he and Sacks are working “hand in glove” to not only rewire crypto regulation, but to do it quickly.
“The president’s given us the authority to do that,” Hines said. “He trusts his advisors.”
Hines played wide receiver for North Carolina State’s football team, and has said his interest in digital assets began as far back as 2014, when he played in the BitPay-sponsored Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. N.C. State beat the University of Central Florida by a touchdown in the game, and Hines caught three passes.
Hines went to Wake Forest to pursue a law degree. He explored regulatory issues related to crypto and became a retail investor. He then turned his attention to public office, losing campaigns for Congress in 2022 and 2024.
But along the way, in the 2022 primary, Hines won the endorsement of Trump, who called the candidate a “proven winner both on and off the field” in a news release from his Save America PAC.
In late 2024, Hines was tapped by President Trump to lead his Council of Advisers on Digital Assets. Now, he’s tasked with helping steer national crypto strategy, under Sacks, with a promise to “move at tech speed.”
Hines said much of the group’s early work has focused on dismantling what industry insiders call “Operation Choke Point 2.0.” It’s how they refer to an alleged crackdown by legacy banks on digital asset firms.
“They were victims of lawfare for the last four years,” Hines said, referring to the Biden administration. “These are people that are doing nothing but helping our American economy grow.”
On March 24, the group will hit its 60-day milestone — and deliver its first set of recommendations. Though Hines was light on specifics, he previewed a range of ideas under consideration, from proposals to scrap and rewrite outdated IRS rules to building up a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” through “budget-neutral” purchases.
“We view bitcoin as digital gold,” he said. “We want as much of it as we can possibly have for the American people,” he said. “And it’s not going to cost the taxpayer a dime.”
Hines floated one idea from the Bitcoin Act introduced by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., which involves using the unrealized value of U.S. gold reserves to acquire crypto.
“There’s a bunch of creative ways we could get into,” he said.
Hines added that, like Sacks, he’s fully divested from crypto, though he declined to say whether others in the working group would follow suit.
“I can only speak for our office,” he said.
However, Hines said he’s not concerned about Trump’s own crypto-related financial entanglements, which could pose very obvious conflicts of interest. Trump and his family have launched several memecoins, digital collectibles, and a yet-to-be-launched crypto bank.
“He engaged with those assets before he took office,” Hines said. The Trump memecoin was introduced during inauguration weekend. “He’s an American citizen. He has a right to engage in any market that he wants to.”
Hines lauded SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who was tapped to lead a new crypto task force, as well as leadership at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Regulators are already “on the ground making changes,” from throwing out lawsuits to rewriting enforcement rules, he said.
He’s also watching Congress, where a bipartisan Senate committee recently advanced stablecoin legislation, a move Hines called “monumental.”
“Stablecoins could usher in U.S. dollar dominance for decades to come,” he said. “It could alter the course of the way our financial markets work.”
WATCH: David Sacks on bringing people from tech industry to Washington
Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
We recently reported that an early Tesla Semi customer, Ryder, stated that the electric truck program is experiencing more delays and a price increase described as “dramatic.”
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
Read more: Thomas Built Buses debuts its next-gen electric school bus
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