The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve became reality on Thursday, as President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order authorizing the creation of the digital asset stockpile.
White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks announced the news on X, claiming the initiative would not "cost taxpayers a dime.”
“The Reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings,” Sacks wrote.
In a bid to curry favor with the Bitcoin faithful, Trump first promised to create a Bitcoin stockpile held by the U.S. Government back in July 2024.
The price of the world's largest crypto has fallen 5.1% in the past hour to $85,868, defying, at least in the short-term, industry expectations that had been building in recent months.
Bitcoin Price Slides as Crypto Market Reacts to Trump’s Strategic Reserve Order
Bitcoin extended losses Thursday, falling 5.7% in less than an hour as investors reacted to President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The decline came after Bitcoin surged above $92,000 earlier in the week on speculation surrounding the initiative. But the rally has faded as traders take profits and reassess the market impact of the government’s new digital asset policy. Bitcoin has since rebounded slightly to $87,200, CoinGecko data shows. Ethereum lost...
The U.S. will not sell the Bitcoin it holds in the reserve, Sacks said, adding the reserve would act like a “digital Fort Knox,” and likening the crypto to “digital gold.”
"The Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers," he said.
The executive order, as seen by Decrypt, directs federal agencies to provide a full accounting of all government-held digital assets within 30 days, with the Treasury Department tasked with evaluating the legal and investment framework for managing the reserve over the next 60 days.
While the order does not outline a specific acquisition strategy beyond forfeitures, it signals a potential shift in U.S. monetary policy toward recognizing Bitcoin as a sovereign reserve asset.
The move could put pressure on other nations to formalize their own Bitcoin strategies, as global adoption and competition for scarce BTC intensify.
Sacks added that the executive order also establishes a separate Digital Asset Stockpile, consisting of digital assets other than Bitcoin forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings.
Trump’s Crypto Summit: What Is It, Who’s Going, and Why the 'Crypto Council' Fell Apart
The White House is set to hold its first-ever crypto summit on Friday—and most industry bigwigs are jockeying for a seat at the table. The inaugural crypto summit is likely to be run by AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks and essentially supplants President Donald Trump’s promised “crypto council,” which the administration quietly ditched in recent weeks as crypto industry infighting threatened to undo political goodwill, sources told Decrypt. Formal invites to the summit began trickling out Tuesday...
“The government will not acquire additional assets for the Stockpile beyond those obtained through forfeiture proceedings,” Sacks added.
“PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT,” Sacks tweeted.
Sacks also pointed to the U.S.’s estimated 200,000 BTC holdings, obtained through criminal seizures, bringing the initial estimated reserve value to $17.7 billion.
“Now the federal government will have a strategy to maximize the value of its holdings,” Sacks wrote.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
Daily Debrief Newsletter
