This Week in Bitcoin: Strategy Stalls, But White House Plans to Buy More BTC

By Mat Di Salvo

One week after U.S. President Trump announced a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the asset is trading down—mostly thanks to wider macroeconomic uncertainties stemming from the new commander in chief's dramatic and unpredictable policies.

Bitcoin was priced at a little over $84,000 per coin as of late Friday evening after dipping nearly 4% over a seven-day period, CoinGecko shows.

But despite dipping more than 20% from its record high in January, the slump could be brief, analysts told Decrypt.

Thanks to...well, Trump—again.

A White House official told a room of crypto big wigs on Thursday that the new administration wants to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible.

This week had no shortage of Bitcoin news.

ETF action

American crypto investors continued to cash out of Bitcoin ETFs this week, with nearly $900 million leaving the investment vehicles as of Thursday, according to the latest data from Farside Investors.

Now, Bitcoin ETFs are lagging behind their gold counterparts, after having briefly overtaken them back in December.

Still, not to worry: Experts told Decrypt that the products have room to run this year, with Bloomberg's ETF analyst Eric Balchunas adding that he thought Bitcoin was likely to win the ETF war over the long-term.

Bitwise launches another BTC-related ETF

Speaking of ETFs, asset managers still don't think the market's crowded: Bitwise on Tuesday launched a new fund giving investors exposure to publicly traded companies with the biggest Bitcoin stashes.

The new Bitwise Bitcoin Standard Corporations ETF—OWNB—tracks 21 firms that hold 1,000 Bitcoins or more, including Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), Bitcoin miner MARA, America's biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, and even electric car company Tesla.

Rumble buys more Bitcoin

YouTube rival Rumble wasn't included in Bitwise's index, but the company is a good example of a smaller firm stacking sats: The media firm last year said it would allocate $20 million of its excess cash reserves to Bitcoin.

And on Wednesday, the Nasdaq-listed platform announced it had bought roughly 188 orange coins for its treasury at an average price of $91,000 per token.

Is Strategy done buying?

Bitcoin treasury Strategy, which came up with the blueprint Rumble is now following, has slowed down its BTC buys after a manic shopping spree.

Decrypt spoke to experts who said it was unlikely the company—previously known as MicroStrategy—was giving up its long-term plan, and rather focusing on its new stock offering, STRK.

White House going orange

Perhaps most dramatically for Bitcoiners this week, news dropped that the White House does indeed want to buy more Bitcoin.

Attendees at a closed-door roundtable hosted by the Bitcoin Policy Institute on Tuesday confirmed to Decrypt that the new administration is planning to buy as much of the cryptocurrency as possible. That's at least what Bo Hines, the executive director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets, reportedly said.

The news comes after President Trump last week followed through with his campaign promise and signed an order to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve.

Edited by James Rubin

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