Hopes of a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve took another knock this weekend after Donald Trump’s surprise executive order about a non-bitcoin US Sovereign Wealth Fund.
At the press conference covering the order’s signing, pro-Tether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the president that they would explore warrants, equity, and other non-bitcoin investments in their proposal for his requested fund.
Trump’s order made no mention of bitcoin (BTC) or digital assets. Worse, his son Eric tweeted that he actually preferred ether (ETH) over BTC at that time.
Dwindling chances of a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
The disappointment of US Sovereign Wealth Fund political leaders paying no attention to BTC only added insult to injury.
In January, rather than creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Trump created a working group chaired by Solana and Multicoin investor David Sacks to propose assets for a digital asset stockpile.
Binary options wagering site Polymarket is accepting bets at dismal, 18% odds that the US government will hold any amount of BTC in its reserves before April 29, 2025. That betting rate has crashed from 48% just two weeks ago.
Betting odds on Kalshi are higher – 48% betting odds for a US bitcoin reserve before 2026 – although still at the low end of its range since November 2024.
Trump never technically promised a SBR
After uproarious applause at Donald Trump’s July 27, 2024 speech at a Bitcoin conference, anticipation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve continued to build until Trump was sworn in as president. Disappointment set in immediately.
To be clear, a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has at least three variants. The weakest form, a “strategic reserve” in name only, is simply a renaming of the federal government’s existing stockpile of criminal seizures.
Even this branding exercise would involve no purchases and probably include non-BTC assets like BNB, TRX, and even FTT.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute proposed the second, basic version of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that would simply use US Treasury discretion to purchase a modest quantity of BTC using clever tactics like gold revaluation or its Exchange Stabilization Fund.
This version has access to some funding inside Treasury bureaus but doesn’t have access to a Congressional budget.
The third and strongest version involves Congressional approval to authorize a budget for purchasing a true, strategic reserve of BTC akin to existing strategic reserves of oil, minerals, and seeds.
Read more: Donald Trump’s crypto executive order doesn’t mention Bitcoin
For Bitcoin maximalists, the strongest form of these three versions would include BTC only — with no other type of digital asset.
In any case, none of these versions of a potential reserve seem particularly likely given recent statements by Trump and his family.
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