Kevin Warsh's ethics filing reveals stakes in DeFi protocols, Ethereum scaling networks, a Bitcoin Lightning startup, and prediction markets — all of which he must divest before taking the job.
Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, disclosed a web of crypto and digital asset investments worth well over $100 million in an ethics filing published on Monday — a portfolio that spans DeFi lending protocols, Ethereum layer-2 networks, Bitcoin payment infrastructure, and prediction markets. He has pledged to sell all of it before his tenure begins.
The filing, submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, reveals that Warsh's exposure to the crypto industry runs through at least two fund structures: THSDFS LLC, which holds roughly two dozen positions individually worth up to $5 million, and a series of venture vehicles that include stakes in companies across the blockchain stack. Among the named holdings are Bitwise Asset Management, the firm behind one of the spot Bitcoin ETFs approved in January 2024; Blast, an Ethereum layer-two network; and Flashnet, a startup working on Bitcoin Lightning Network payment infrastructure. He also holds a direct stake in Polymarket, the prediction market platform that became a cultural phenomenon during the 2024 US presidential election.
The sheer breadth of the portfolio matters more than any single position. Warsh's fund structures give him exposure to companies building decentralised exchanges, cross-chain bridges, and autonomous agent frameworks — precisely the categories of crypto activity that federal regulators are still deciding how to oversee. The CLARITY Act, which would establish comprehensive market structure rules for digital assets, is currently in tense negotiations in the Senate Banking Committee. The next Fed chair will not vote on that legislation, but the central bank's interpretation of stablecoin reserves, bank custody rules, and capital requirements for crypto-exposed institutions will shape how those rules function in practice.
Warsh's net worth, disclosed at between $131 million and $209 million, is anchored partly by his marriage to Jane Lauder, a member of the Estée Lauder family. His largest single investment — over $50 million in Juggernaut Fund LP, a vehicle tied to his advisory work with billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office — sits outside the crypto world but underscores the scale of wealth he'll need to restructure. An Office of Government Ethics analyst confirmed that Warsh would be in compliance once the divestitures are complete.
Previous Fed chairs have held conventional assets that demanded divestiture — Jerome Powell owned municipal bonds and stock index funds — but none has entered the job with nine-figure exposure to an asset class that the Fed actively regulates through bank supervisory guidance. The GENIUS Act, signed into law last year, created a federal stablecoin framework that gives the Fed explicit authority over payment stablecoin reserves held at banks. Warsh's former investments in stablecoin-adjacent infrastructure and DeFi lending could create the appearance of conflict even after he's sold everything, particularly if former portfolio companies benefit from accommodative Fed guidance on bank-crypto relationships.
Warsh himself has been publicly measured on crypto. In previous commentary he described Bitcoin as comparable to gold's role as a store of value, while noting it is "not a substitute for the US dollar." He has also suggested that Bitcoin's price movements can serve as a useful signal for monetary policymakers — a position that acknowledges crypto's informational value without endorsing it as a medium of exchange. That rhetorical caution sits oddly alongside a portfolio that amounts to a leveraged bet on the industry's infrastructure layer.
The divestiture process will take months and could itself move markets. Warsh's stakes are held through private fund structures, meaning exits will require negotiation with general partners rather than simple open-market sales. For illiquid positions — early-stage ventures in Ethereum tooling or Lightning Network startups — the timeline could extend well beyond his confirmation hearing, forcing the Office of Government Ethics to grant extensions or accept blind-trust arrangements that may not fully insulate him from knowledge of his former holdings.
The crypto industry will watch the confirmation process for a different reason. A Fed chair who understood the technology well enough to invest in it — even through venture intermediaries — would be a departure from the studied agnosticism of his predecessors. Whether that familiarity produces better policy or simply more sophisticated conflicts of interest is a question the Senate Banking Committee will need to answer before handing Warsh the keys to the world's most powerful central bank.
