Donald Trump has officially announced the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, lauding the world’s most widely-used and valuable cryptocurrency as ‘digital gold’.
The US President issued an executive order on 6 March creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a wider US digital asset stockpile. The purpose of these is to ‘serve as a secure account for orderly and strategic management’ of the US government’s digital assets.
Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of the Treasury, has been tasked with establishing an office to administer and manage the custodial accounts, making up both the Bitcoin receive and the digital asset stockpile.
Creating a form of crypto reserve has been a long-standing policy of the Trump administration, having been a major talking point prior to his inauguration and during the 2024 campaign trail.
Progress on this reserve was not as quick as many crypto stakeholders – the majority of whom seem to have supported Trump in the November 2024 election – had hoped for. Many were disappointed that his first executive order on crypto referred to a stockpile and not a reserve.
Earlier this week though, the President announced via social media that a reserve would come about and that it would contain Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, SOL and ADA. Bitcoin has since enjoyed a surge in value, even more so after today’s announcement.
However, it is notable of course that today’s announcement is just of a Bitcoin reserve – the other four coins have had no mention, and will likely instead find themselves forming part of the more general digital asset stockpile.
“As many had hoped, the US government has separated Bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies. Not only have they confirmed they can buy more Bitcoin, but they also cannot sell it,” says Danny Scott, CEO of Bitcion exchange platform CoinCorner.
“In contrast, with other cryptocurrencies, they can sell but cannot buy more. This is massively positive for Bitcoin, marking a significant step toward global differentiation — something that many in the Bitcoin industry have been advocating for years. The only way other cryptocurrencies will be added to the Digital Asset Stockpile is through forfeiture.”
Bitcoin reserve in US national interest, says Trump
Explaining his rationale for the reserve, Trump stated that the US federal government has ‘a significant amount of BTC’. The limitation of Bitcoin to 21 million units via the Bitcoin protocol makes it a scarce resource, he argues, and so the US should protect a vital asset.
“Just as it is in our country’s interest to thoughtfully manage national ownership and control of any other resource, our nation must harness, not limit, the power of digital assets for our prosperity,” Trump’s order read.
“As a result of its scarcity and security, Bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold”. 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.”
Trump is not wrong in saying that the US government already holds a substantial amount of Bitcoin, along with other digital assets. The federal government has over $1bn worth of cryptocurrency in total, much of which was seized by the US Marshals Service (USMS) during criminal investigations, such as a record $3.36bn from Federal authorities during the Silk Road dark web scam.
The President finally announcing his long-awaited reserve will undoubtedly be well received by the crypto sector, while Bitcoin’s value has again risen. Like all political decisions though, it will still be met with scepticism.
The fallout from the $Trump memecoin fiasco in particular, with this widely criticised as an example of a ’rug pull’ by some, has made many sceptical of some of Trump’s motivations around crypto policy.
