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Hopes of a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve took another knock this weekend after Donald Trump’s surprise executive order about a non-bitcoin US Sovereign Wealth Fund.
At the press conference covering the order’s signing, pro-Tether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the president that they would explore warrants, equity, and other non-bitcoin investments in their proposal for his requested fund.
Trump’s order made no mention of bitcoin ($BTC) or digital assets. Worse, his son Eric tweeted that he actually preferred ether (ETH) over $BTC at that time.
Dwindling chances of a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
The disappointment of US Sovereign Wealth Fund political leaders paying no attention to $BTC only added insult to injury.
In January, rather than creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Trump created a working group chaired by Solana and Multicoin investor David Sacks to propose assets for a digital asset stockpile.
Binary options wagering site Polymarket is accepting bets at dismal, 18% odds that the US government will hold any amount of $BTC in its reserves before April 29, 2025. That betting rate has crashed from 48% just two weeks ago.
Betting odds on Kalshi are higher – 48% betting odds for a US bitcoin reserve before 2026 – although still at the low end of its range since November 2024.
Trump never technically promised a SBR
After uproarious applause at Donald Trump’s July 27, 2024 speech at a Bitcoin conference, anticipation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve continued to build until Trump was sworn in as president. Disappointment set in immediately.
To be clear, a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has at least three variants. The weakest form, a “strategic reserve” in name only, is simply a renaming of the federal government’s existing stockpile of criminal seizures.
Even this branding exercise would involve no purchases and probably include non-$BTC assets like BNB, TRX, and even FTT.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute proposed the second, basic version of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that would simply use US Treasury discretion to purchase a modest quantity of $BTC using clever tactics like gold revaluation or its Exchange Stabilization Fund.
This version has access to some funding inside Treasury bureaus but doesn’t have access to a Congressional budget.
The third and strongest version involves Congressional approval to authorize a budget for purchasing a true, strategic reserve of $BTC akin to existing strategic reserves of oil, minerals, and seeds.
Read more: Donald Trump’s crypto executive order doesn’t mention Bitcoin
For Bitcoin maximalists, the strongest form of these three versions would include $BTC only — with no other type of digital asset.
In any case, none of these versions of a potential reserve seem particularly likely given recent statements by Trump and his family.