US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday creating a strategic bitcoin reserve, a day before meeting with cryptocurrency industry executives at the White House.
The document also introduces the United States Digital Asset Stockpile, a fund to hold other digital assets seized by authorities.
Under the executive order, the US will stop selling confiscated bitcoins and develop a strategy to hoard them, but at no additional cost to taxpayers. Altcoins (Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Cardano, etc.) will go into a separate fund, but the government will not buy them.
In the text of the decree bitcoin is called “digital gold,” and its limited issue is seen as a strategic advantage. According to Arkham data, there is $18.4 billion in cryptocurrencies on the wallets controlled by the US authorities, of which $17.98 billion accounts for 198,100 BTC.
The full text of the decree is published on the White House website. Details on the creation and operation of the reserve fund will be discussed at a crypto summit at the White House on March 7.
Ahead of this summit, David Sacks, appointed by Trump to the position of “cryptocurrency czar” in the administration, calculated a loss of about $17bn from the sale of bitcoin by the US government. According to him, this much cost the American taxpayers “lack of a long-term strategy.”
After Trump signed the executive order, Sacks wrote that the reserve would be made up of federal government-owned bitcoins seized as part of court cases. “This means it won’t cost taxpayers a cent,” Sacks added.
The bitcoin exchange rate fell more than 5 per cent after the publication of Trump’s crypto reserve decree (from $90k to $85k), but then partially recovered, reaching $88.5k at 10:30 a.m. on March 7.
