New York
CNN
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President Donald Trump established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order on Thursday.
The Treasury Department will set up an office to administer the reserve, which will be capitalized with Bitcoin (BTC) forfeited to the government as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, according to the order.
“Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency,” the order said. “Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve.”
The order also created a US Digital Asset Stockpile under the Treasury Department to manage other coins and assets. On Sunday, Trump posted on social media that he would direct the government to stockpile bitcoin, ethereum and three other tokens, which prompted backlash from the crypto industry.
In addition, the executive order directed a full accounting of the government’s digital assets holdings. David Sacks, the White House czar for AI and cryptocurrency, wrote on X that the government has about 200,000 bitcoin. Each Bitcoin is currently worth about $87,000, according to Coinmarketcap, putting the estimated value of the reserve at around $17.5 billion.
The cryptocurrency industry has enjoyed an unprecedented seat at the table in Trump’s White House, in contrast to a harder line drawn by former President Joe Biden and his administration. On Friday, for example, the White House will hold its first-ever crypto summit.
Like the broader market, the crypto market has whipsawed as Trump’s economic policies go into effect, including a back-and-forth on tariffs that has injected chaos into the world’s biggest economy. And when the market is shaky, investors pull out of risky assets like crypto.
Critics of crypto say the asset has an artificial backing to its value and question the need for a reserve.
“The second you start to sell, the price is going to start tanking,” Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University and a prominent crypto skeptic, previously told CNN. “It just shows how pointless the whole thing is if you have any goal other than to essentially provide exit liquidity for existing holders.”
In his Sunday post on Truth Social, Trump said that in addition to Bitcoin and ethereum, relatively obscure tokens Solana, XRP and Cardano would be stockpiled.
Sacks also pushed back on accusations on social media that he had a conflict of interest as an investor in cryptocurrencies. Sacks, the co-founder of Craft Ventures, tweeted that he sold all of his crypto holdings before Trump took office and said he would “provide an update at the end of the ethics process.”
“There may still be several surprises that come out of the historic summit on Friday, and the market will still continue to deal with the weaker-than-expected jobs data that came in today and other macro factors,” said Gerald Gallagher, general counsel for Sei Labs.
“That said, the industry leaders attending should be able to continue to advise on policy in the right direction, and we need to keep winning with the regulators and the courts with the help of this administration,” he added.
This story has been updated with additional reporting and context. CNN’s Rashard Rose contributed reporting.
