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On Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong hinted that a strategic bitcoin reserve was imminent under President Donald Trump.
"I think he is excited about it. I mean, he really wants to be the first bitcoin president," Armstrong told Yahoo at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
At last year's Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Trump promised to create a national bitcoin stockpile. “For too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said.
"If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America to keep 100 percent of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future," Trump said. "This will serve in effect as the core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile."
Armstrong underlined that the strategic bitcoin reserve was a logical step, in light of existing reserves: "The U.S. actually has reserves in lots of things, gold, oil, I think, like 27 different rare minerals, like palladium and all these things,” Armstrong said. “And so I think the world is moving to a bitcoin standard for money. Any government who holds gold should also hold bitcoin as a reserve."
The Coinbase CEO emphasized that if the U.S. were to adopt a strategic bitcoin reserve, other G20 countries would likely follow suit, potentially driving up bitcoin's price.
He also pointed to the record inflows into bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which launched last January and now boast a market capitalization exceeding $122 billion, with nearly $126 billion in assets under management. “This is all positive news for bitcoin adoption,” Armstrong said.
“I think [Trump's] pushing every department in the U.S. in getting regulatory clarity [for the crypto industry],” Armstrong said.
Last July, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced the BITCOIN Act, which aims to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve and acquire 1 million bitcoins, or nearly 5% of bitcoin's global supply, effectively matching the amount of gold held in reserve by the U.S.
Others in the crypto space, however, doubt Trump will pursue a strategic bitcoin reserve. “I don't think Trump will get around to doing a bitcoin reserve,” former BitMex CEO Arthur Hayes told CoinDesk. “At the end of the day, I don't know how borrowing money to buy bitcoin helps on any of Trump's platforms.”
“There's a lot of different things you can borrow money to spend it on. I just don't think that he's going to spend it on bitcoin," Hayes explained. "[A]s important as bitcoin bros think they are, there's a lot of other interested parties that want that borrowed money to go into their pockets."