President Donald Trump has signed a decree to establish a strategic reserve for Bitcoin, which makes the United States one of the few countries in the world to create a national stock of blockchain assets.
The reserve will hold the cryptocurrency confiscated to the federal government in the context of criminal or civil procedures, the White House AI and the Tsar Crypto David Sacks said in a post on x.
The United States will not sell any Bitcoin deposited in the reserve, have declared bags, and will rather keep it as an asset.
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to establish a Bitcoin reserve. Brazil, Japan and Switzerland have also debated such a stage.
Trump – Who only four years ago said that Bitcoin “seems to be a scam” – revealed plans earlier this week to make the United States “the capital of the cryptographic world”.
Friday, the president is due to welcome the first summit of cryptography at the White House.
It is not known whether the planned reserve could face legal obstacles, or if it could require an act of the congress.
Sacks said that the stock would serve as “a strong digital Knox for cryptocurrency”, establishing a comparison with a Kentucky military base which stores an important part of American gold assets.
Trump’s order also creates a stock of digital assets for cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin that have been lost.
He directs complete accounting of the cryptographic reserves of the federal government, which, according to Sacks, are estimated at 200,000 bitcoin. This is worth $ 17.5 billion (13.6 billion pounds sterling) at today’s prices.
We did not know how the new stock would be beneficial to the Americans, but Sacks said that it “would not cost taxpayers a penny”.
Its involvement that the United States government does not buy bitcoin prices for the world’s largest cryptocurrency to drop by more than 5%.
Some countries maintain strategic reserves of national assets to diversify government assets and go to bed against financial risk.
The United States also retains an oil reserve. Canada has a maple syrup reserve.
Earlier this week, Trump revealed the names of five cryptocurrencies that he said he would like to include in the strategic reserve.
The market prices of the five pieces he appointed – Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Cardano – quickly jumped after this announcement.
Trump aggressively courted the cryptographic community during his presidential campaign. Former American president Joe Biden led repression against cryptography, citing worries about fraud.
