President Donald Trump is throwing his support behind the creation of a federal reserve of cryptocurrency assets — he initially highlighted XRP, Solana, and Cardano for inclusion, then later said Bitcoin and Ethereum would “obviously” be included too.
In January, Trump issued an executive order calling for the formation of a working group that would study and make recommendations around crypto policy, including “the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile.”
The working group was supposed to “propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile,” which could be “potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.”
In a post Sunday morning on his social network Truth Social, Trump seemed to go further, making it clear that he wants to see the reserve become a reality.
“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,” Trump wrote. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”
As of publication time, the prices of all three cryptocurrencies mentioned in Trump’s post had shot up by 20% or more. Then he wrote in a follow-up post, “And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable Cryptocurrencies, will be the heart of the Reserve. I also love Bitcoin and Ethereum!”
As Trump acknowledged in his post, his executive order seemed directed at undoing the crypto regulatory framework put in place by former President Joe Biden.
Under the Trump administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken a friendlier, deregulatory stance towards the industry, dismissing its lawsuit against Coinbase and declaring that memecoins are not securities. (The value of Trump’s own $TRUMP coin has plummeted since his inauguration.)
Trump has also signed an executive order calling for the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund that he said could be used to purchase TikTok.
This post has been updated to reflect Trump’s follow-up message mentioning Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Anthony Ha is TechCrunch’s weekend editor. Previously, he worked as a tech reporter at Adweek, a senior editor at VentureBeat, a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, and vice president of content at a VC firm. He lives in New York City.
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