• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

Finally, there’s the “national digital asset stockpile”, which seems to be the most disappointing to the crypto world. Last issue [I74], I mentioned the horrified reaction by bitcoin maximalists to the rumors that Trump was considering cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin for his stockpile. This shift from the “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” wording Trump used at the Bitcoin Conference in July 2024, to “digital asset stockpile”, seems to cement this concern for a lot of bitcoiners, who lamented the likelihood of a “national shitcoin stockpile”. Furthermore, there was disappointment that Trump was not establishing a “strategic reserve” of the kinds promoted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his presidential campaign, or by Senator Cynthia Lummis in her “BITCOIN Act” proposal. Both of those suggest that the US government should go out and buy a substantial quantity of bitcoin (4 million and 1 million BTC, respectively), which would pump the bags of bitcoiners (including Kennedy and Lummis themselves). However, Trump’s executive order echoes his suggestion at the Bitcoin Conference that the US government should establish a stockpile by holding on to cryptocurrencies seized by law enforcement, rather than selling them after the assets are formally forfeited. As I wrote in Issue 70: [Trump] fails to acknowledge that much of the time when the government seizes crypto assets and then sells them later on, the proceeds are returned to the victims of the crime.