In This Article:
Crypto-related stocks, including Coinbase (COIN), Riot (RIOT), and Strategy (MSTR) — previously known as MicroStrategy — moved to the upside on Monday after President Donald Trump announced a strategic crypto reserve.
The reserve will include digital assets such as bitcoin (BTC-USD), ethereum (ETH-USD), XRP (XRP-USD), Solana (SOL-USD), and Cardano (ADA-USD). Managing director of CoinDesk Indices Andy Baehr joins Morning Brief to discuss his outlook on the reserve.
Baehr emphasizes that the digital assets beyond bitcoin mentioned for the reserve weren't "arbitrarily picked," though they were "a surprise" to investors.
"It's a great step forward in the last of a series of very crypto-positive news in the United States," he says, though he cautions that all the details related to this reserve are "way in the future," describing this announcement as more of "an intent."
While investors were primarily focused on bitcoin, Baehr believes the addition of other cryptocurrencies and indexing the crypto in the reserve was the right approach. He concludes, "It's very positive. A summit that goes beyond bitcoin shows that the United States, as the president said, wants to be the crypto capital of the world."
Crypto stocks here today. Taking a look at those big names after President Trump announced the creation of a strategic crypto reserve. This comes after Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 last week. Joining us now, we've got Andy Bear, who is the CoinDesk managing director. Andy, great to have you back here in studio with us. What What does this mean for the crypto market broadly? This was campaigned on, this was expected. So, is there any shock or surprise value to this?
First of all, how's your guys' weekend? You have a good weekend?
It's true, man. You don't have weekends, so it's always nice to hear what somebody has been doing.
I don't think we've had a weekend in six months. Um, it was it was at, you know, 10:24 yesterday morning, this first post on Truth Social came up with the president, and the, I think the the big differences is that other tokens besides Bitcoin and Ether were mentioned as being eligible or as being attractive for a reserve, Solana, XRP and and Cardano. Uh, we actually have an index. These aren't arbitrarily picked. We have a large cap index, we call the CoinDesk 5, which actually includes those five assets in it, uh, which which supports better part of a billion dollars in assets. So, they aren't arbitrary names. They were a surprise to the market. The other interesting surprise was that the the first uh, social post failed to mention Bitcoin and Ether, and about an hour and a half later, the president said, "Oh yeah, Bitcoin and Ether also." So, there was a little bit of um, um, you know, concern in the meantime as people were sipping their Sunday morning coffee and looking. Uh, it's a great step forward in the in the last of a series of very crypto positive news in the United States.
And did you know how much is going to be bought or how it's going to be funded? I guess how how should investors be thinking about that?
That the the details of this and and what kind of congressional, you know, action would be required, all the details are way in the future. I think we're talking about um, an intent here. Uh, the president also or the White House also announced that there would be on March 7th, a crypto summit led by the cryptozar, David Sachs and other folks. So, I think a lot of the details might be hammered out there, but the idea that the government might reach beyond Bitcoin into a portfolio of digital assets of important digital assets, uh, and try to store things there is is interesting. Just think about Bitcoin's almost a $2 trillion asset, right? So, when you think about size, the smallest, Cardano's only about 35, sorry, about 50, 35 billion. So, way, way, way, way smaller. So, you have to think about scaling uh, on a market cap basis, you'd have to, you know, have a lot more Bitcoin, a lot less Cardano. Yet, Cardano was the biggest performer on yesterday's news.
So, the skepticism surrounding this obviously makes a lot of sense, just given the lack of any of these types of details.
Um, I think there is hesitation. I think, look, uh, it was the first time I think that other assets had been mentioned. I think the idea that you would want to index what you're getting and not only get Bitcoin as a store of value, but actually invest in future of finance. Solana, Cardano and um, and Ethereum are all layer one smart contract block uh, blockchains, right? They they really kind of support the applications which are going to change our lives in the future. So, investing in that kind of technology, yet not particularly uh, picking one winner in particular, I think is a good move. We of course love indexing. We're an indexing company, so we believe in that kind of style. Um, so I think it's it's very positive. Uh, a summit that goes beyond Bitcoin shows that the United States, as the president said, wants to be the crypto capital of the world.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.
This post was written by Angel Smith