The cryptocurrency market rallied Sunday after President Donald Trump announced the creation of a strategic national crypto reserve on social media platform Truth Social, which he owns.
The reserve is set to include bitcoin, ether, Ripple’s XRP, Solana’s SOL and Cardano’s ADA, he wrote. It will “elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration” as Trump focuses on “mak[ing] sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”
The announcement followed bitcoin’s Friday dip below $80,000, the coin’s lowest value in several months. Bitcoin climbed to over $94,000 Sunday and is worth $90,256 as of 12:30 p.m. Eastern time Monday.
Of the five named, ADA experienced the biggest rally by percentage, jumping from $0.65 to $1.08. It’s worth $0.97 as of 11:30 a.m. ET Monday.
All five coins jumped Sunday and have since cooled somewhat.
Trump first teased the idea of a national bitcoin stockpile at the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville last summer.
Shortly after returning to the White House, he issued an executive order establishing the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets to evaluate the “potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile and propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile” potentially derived from crypto seized by the government through law enforcement.
The Working Group is also tasked with proposing a federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a Sunday post on social media site X that he was “still forming an opinion on asset allocation,” but believed “just Bitcoin would probably be the best option — simplest, and clear story as successor to gold.”
“If folks wanted more variety, you could do a market cap weighted index of crypto assets to keep it unbiased,” but sticking to bitcoin only is “probably easiest,” he wrote.
Andrew O’Neill, digital assets managing director at S&P Global Ratings, noted that “[i]n the context of a sovereign’s investments, the narrative for allocating some portion to BTC is similar to gold.”
“In contrast, ETH (Ether) and SOL (Solana) focus on tech platform adoption, while ADA (Cardano) and XRP (Ripple) are more speculative due to lower adoption,” he wrote in an emailed statement to Banking Dive. “Investing in these assets differs significantly from BTC and tech venture investment is less common for sovereigns.”
Trump’s proposal lacks details on size, timing, and whether it will be managed by the Federal Reserve or another entity, O’Neill noted.
The U.S. government holds more than $18 billion in crypto, including nearly 200,000 bitcoins, according to crypto research firm Arkham Intelligence.
