Trump, once a crypto skeptic, establishes a bitcoin reserve
The reserve would be funded with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset proceedings.
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- US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order for a strategic bitcoin reserve.
- The reserve will use bitcoin from federal asset forfeiture proceedings.
- Trump's move contrasts with his past crypto skepticism.
US President Donald Trump has inked an executive order for a strategic bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile.
The bitcoin reserve would be funded with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset proceedings, according to the executive order on Thursday.
The news was first announced on X by entrepreneur David Sacks who is the artificial intelligence and crypto czar at the White House. He said that because of the way the reserve is funded, creating it "will not cost taxpayers a dime."
The Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce can develop "budget-neutral strategies" for acquiring additional bitcoin — as long as there are no incremental costs on American taxpayers, according to the executive order.
The US will also establish digital-asset stockpile made up of other digital assets forfeited in the same way. There are also no plans to acquired additional assets beyond those from forfeiture proceedings.
The US would not sell any bitcoin deposited into the reserve and it would be kept as a store of value.
Sacks said the US government owns an estimated 200,000 bitcoins.
"The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called 'digital gold,'" Sacks wrote.
Bitcoin was trading around $88,000 at 9:49 p.m. ET. It was 0.9% lower over 1 hour and 4.4% down over 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has been under pressure recently on broader risk-off sentiment. Bitcoin is still higher than on election day, when the price was around $68,000.
Before this presidential campaign, Trump took a tough stance on crypto.
In 2019, he described the digital assets as "highly volatile and based on thin air" and highlighted their role in the drug trade.
However, he embraced crypto in his last presidential campaign and called himself the "crypto president." The new administration is ending Biden-era investigations into cryptocurrency-associated companies, among other measures.
