Over the weekend, President Trump took to social media to reiterate plans for a strategic cryptocurrency reserve that triggered an immediate spike in crypto prices. He initially mentioned XRP, Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) before referencing Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in a subsequent “Truth.”
Bitcoin rose as much as 11.5% from $85,200 to $94,600 before giving back some of the bounce to trade 5.5% higher (in the last 24 hours) at the time of writing, at about $90,000.
Ether also had an initial pop that has since faded, now up 3.7% in the last 24 hours.
XRP is up 16.2% in the last day.
Solana is up 11.8%.
Lastly, ADA is up 46.7%.
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Aside from offering a short-term reprieve for cryptocurrency traders, it’s unclear what the proposed reserve accomplishes.
The previously released Executive Order and the subsequent social media activity do not provide any specifics about either the purpose or scope of the proposed crypto reserve.
It should be noted that a Senate bill, the BITCOIN Act, was introduced in 2024 and called for the U.S. government to establish a Bitcoin Purchase Program to “purchase not more than 200,000 Bitcoins per year over a 5-year period, for a total acquisition of 1,000,000 Bitcoins.”
The 1 million figure appears, on its face, to be arbitrary, as holding roughly 5% of the total circulating supply achieves nothing from a control or security standpoint but merely provides market exposure, functional holdings for some future use, or some level of endorsement of cryptocurrency as an asset class.
We also do not know if President Trump intends to mirror the Act’s scope.
In other words, the proposed reserves could be as little as the existing holdings (just under $19 billion worth), the 1 million figure ($90 billion worth), or significantly more.
To attempt to answer that open question, it may be instructive to look at one of the government’s other strategic reserves, namely, gold.
Cryptocurrency Reserves vs. Gold Reserves
The U.S. government currently holds 261 million troy ounces of gold, which it values at $42.22 per ounce.
Based on the current spot price of $2,860/ounce, those holdings are more accurately valued at $781 billion and represent 4% of the total global market cap of gold ($19.3 trillion).
Given Bitcoin’s total market cap of $1.8 trillion, a commensurate holding would be $72 billion, or about 800,000 tokens, not far off from the 1 million figure that has been previously floated.
A 4% stake of the five cryptocurrencies mentioned by President Trump would be as follows:
| Token | Market Cap | 4% Stake |
| Bitcoin | $1.8 trillion | $72 billion |
| Ether | $274 billion | $11 billion |
| XRP | $151 billion | $ 6.0 billion |
| Solana | $80 billion | $3.2 billion |
| Cardano | $34 billion | $1.4 billion |
In each case, a 4% stake of the outstanding market cap of these tokens represents a day’s volume (or less) and could be acquired without meaningfully moving the market, especially if, as outlined in the BITCOIN Act, those reserves were built over a multi-year period.
Unfortunately for traders, a reasonable accumulation of crypto over a multi-year period is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on prices due to those acquisitions alone.
Barring more clarification from President Trump on the proposed cryptocurrency reserves (i.e., unless we learn that the U.S. government will be buying hand over fist), there’s no reason to believe that the U.S. will be anything other than yet another large buyer that’s building up a stake with the expectation that crypto will, at some point in the future, become workable currencies for which its holdings will serve a functional purpose.
Put another way, while it’s undoubtedly a positive announcement for crypto investors, don’t expect a government buying spree to overpower other market forces and flip what’s been a retreat in risk-on assets into a new bull market.
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