Trump announces strategic crypto reserve including bitcoin, Solana, XRP and more

Cryptocurrencies rallied on Sunday after President Donald Trump announced the creation of a strategic crypto reserve for the United States that will include bitcoin and ether, as well as XRP,  Solana’s SOL token and Cardano’s ADA.

“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA,” he said in a post on Truth Social. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”

“And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable Cryptocurrencies, will be at the heart of the Reserve,” he said in a follow-up post. “I also love Bitcoin and Ethereum!”

XRP surged 33% after the announcement while the token tied to Solana jumped 25%. Cardano’s coin soared more than 60%.

Bitcoin rose 10% to $94,343.82, after dipping to a three-month low under $80,000 on Friday. Ether, which has suffered some of the biggest losses in crypto year-to-date, gained 13%.

Trump is hosting the first White House Crypto Summit on Friday, and investors will be watching closely for more clues about the direction of the reserve plans.

This is the first time Trump has specified his support for a crypto “reserve” versus a “stockpile.” While the former assumes actively buying crypto in regular installments, a stockpile would simply not sell any of the crypto currently held by the U.S. government.

Trump first introduced the idea of a bitcoin stockpile, which would “keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future” last summer at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, one of the industry’s largest conferences, where he began courting the crypto vote. At the same event, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced her proposal for a national strategic bitcoin reserve.

After his re-election in November, the drumbeat for a strategic bitcoin reserve grew louder, helping send the price of the flagship cryptocurrency to new all-time highs. That momentum seemed to come to a halt after Trump issued his executive order on crypto in late January. It called for the President’s Working Group on crypto to evaluate the “potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts,” among other things.

Much of the industry had a lukewarm response to the language. In addition to the order specifying a stockpile over a reserve, use of the term “digital assets” suggested it could include other cryptocurrencies.

However, many in the crypto community feel strongly that a crypto reserve should hold only bitcoin as it’s the most battle tested and decentralized of the crypto networks. The inclusion of other coins could also invites the government to pick winners and losers in the crypto market, they say.

Another faction rejects the idea of a U.S. reserve of any cryptocurrencies, as it could potentially undermine the status of the dollar and be easily undone by a future administration.

“The next election could see a new administration come in and need to find money to pay debt, social security, etc. They could sell the reserve,” said Adam Blumberg, co-founder and vice president of advisory services at Enclave Group.

“I just don’t like the idea of the U.S. government, or any government, owning the most decentralized asset ever,” he added. “That’s not what it was created for [and puts] too much power in the hands of the federal government, which is always in a 4-year, or even 2-year, cycle.”

Bitcoin, absent a crypto specific catalyst, had been in consolidation since the executive order. It just closed out its worst month since 2022.

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