For the crypto industry, Donald Trump’s administration is the gift that keeps on giving. The president’s latest offering: A plan to move forward with the creation of a national crypto reserve, stocked with highly volatile coins, and backed by taxpayer money.
The president announced new details of the plan, which he previously touted on the campaign trail, Sunday afternoon on Truth Social. “A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration,” he wrote.
The president named five tokens—Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano—which will be included in the reserve. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World,” he wrote in the post, days before a flurry of industry execs are set to descend upon the White House for its first crypto summit this Friday.
The announcement predictably sent the price of those coins soaring, which, of course, is good news for Trump’s crypto bro backers—who funded his campaign along with other pro-crypto candidates—to the tune of $130 million, according to The New York Times. So far, they appear to be getting what they paid for, as the Trump administration has systematically rolled back crypto oversight and dropped investigations into major players.
The creation of a Bitcoin and Ethereum-backed crypto reserve wouldn’t just benefit Trump’s donors; it would almost certainly benefit the Trump family, too. Their crypto company, World Liberty Financial, reportedly bought millions of dollars worth of crypto, including Bitcoin and Ether, hours before Trump was inaugurated. Others have speculated the reserve could be a boost for Trump’s “crypto czar,” David Sacks, who was previously an investor in Bitwise, a crypto asset management fund whose top holdings just happen to include the five coins Trump announced would go into the reserve. Sacks clarified on X that he sold his crypto holdings prior to the start of the administration and offloaded his stake in Bitwise in January.
But accusations of self-dealing aside, Trump’s announcement garnered concerns even from some Bitcoin boosters. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong argued that such a reserve should include “just Bitcoin.” Investor Joe Lonsdale, meanwhile, questioned the wisdom of taking that kind of risk with taxpayer dollars. “It’s wrong to steal my money for grift on the left,” Lonsdale wrote on X Sunday, along with a screenshot of the president’s post. “It’s also wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes.”
