Yesterday, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) entitled “Strengthening American Leadership In Digital Financial Technology.”
The document outlines the ways in which the U.S. government will embrace “digital assets” and support the rights of citizens and businesses to engage with “cryptocurrencies” and “blockchain technology.”
Bitcoin isn’t mentioned once in the document.
Most concerningly, it’s not mentioned in the portion of the document that addresses the potential for the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets (also established via the EO) to create a “stockpile” of digital assets.
Here’s exactly how it reads:
“The Working Group shall evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile and propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.”
Bitcoin is one of 17 digital assets the Federal Government has seized.
"stockpile" is jargon that means holding what they have, but not necessarily buying anything
— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) January 23, 2025
according to @arkham, here's all the coins that the USG holds over $1m pic.twitter.com/CtLEuP5utA
The idea that the government would hold onto the 16 other crypto assets the government is holding is both silly and pointless, as none of those other assets were designed to be a store of value, and a chunk of them are just digital versions of the ever-debasing U.S. dollar.
In other words, there’s no reason for the U.S. to stockpile digital assets that are perpetually losing value versus bitcoin. Without even getting into the features that differentiate bitcoin from the other assets on the list above — like its hard-coded perfect scarcity or its network’s level of decentralization — one needs to only take note of the fact that no digital asset has ever made subsequent highs versus bitcoin in consecutive bull markets to understand why it makes sense to only hold bitcoin.
I mean, even someone whose company evaluates shitcoins for a living agrees:
I didn’t donate $12 million to Kamala or cost the GOP three additional Senate seats like Ripple did.
— Ryan Selkis (d/acc) 🇺🇸 (@twobitidiot) January 24, 2025
But I’m still gonna try to help @realDonaldTrump and team understand why XRP is the poster child for why we shouldn’t have a national crypto reserve.
Bitcoin Reserve or nothing.
So, please President Trump, beef up the bitcoin stockpile by swapping the 16 other digital assets you’re holding for bitcoin, and let’s call it a day. Surely, you’ve seen how well the bitcoin-only approach has worked out for President Bukele, with whom you spoke just the other day.
It’s time to show the world that we understand that bitcoin is the savings technology and that everything else is, well, something else.
