President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create a national escort of bitcoin and other digital currencies, a bold idea that has been widely criticized as a scheme to enrich cryptographic investors.
The base of the stock will be a basis of Bitcoin, estimated for a value of $ 17 billion, which the United States have seized in legal cases over the years.
The order also provides that federal agencies develop strategies to purchase more bitcoins, the most popular digital currency, provided that these purchases did not generate additional costs for taxpayers.
“This executive order underlines the commitment of President Trump in making the United States the” Crypto Capital of the World “”, said David Sacks, the Tsar of the crypt and the AI of the White House, in a post on social media. He said the United States would not sell Bitcoin in the reserve, which compared to “a digital Fort Knox”.
Since Trump came in office in January, his administration quickly moved to raise the cryptocurrency industry, a volatile sector that had fought with federal regulators for years. The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped legal actions against two of the largest US cryptocurrency companies and has stopped investigations in many others. And Friday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to host cryptocurrency managers in the White House for a “Summit Crypto”.
Trump has a personal participation in the success of the cryptocurrency industry, creating conflicts of interests that have raised alarms with government ethics experts. Last year he started a company, World Liberty Financial, which offers a cryptocurrency called WLFI. A few days before his inauguration, he also began to sell a so-called memecoin-a type of cryptocurrency linked to an online joke or a figure of celebrity.
The idea of an American cryptocurrency gained traction last year while Mr. Trump embraced the industry on the countryside track. The supporters argued that an investment in Bitcoin would help the government to divert the national debt from 36 trillions of dollars and ensure that the United States remained dominant in a hypothetical future in which the global economy runs in cryptocurrencies.
But the skeptics said that the plan seemed calculated to enrich the crypto managers who already owned large quantities of Bitcoin by raising its price. They argued that it was dangerous to connect the economic future of the nation to a highly volatile resource.
During a conference in Nashville in July, Trump held a speech to a crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts and promised to establish a national escort. He doubled that promise last weekend, publishing on social media that intended to create a reserve composed of Bitcoin and other less known cryptocurrencies, such as Solana, Cardano, Ether and XRP.
That plan aroused criticism by some cryptographic managers, who claimed that the only resource in a national reserve should be Bitcoin, the most precious cryptocurrency on the market.
Based on the order, the government will create a separate stock of digital activities other than Bitcoin. But it will include only coins acquired in criminal or civil seizures and the government will not move to buy cryptocurrencies except bitcoin.
Crypto investors celebrated the announcement on social media, calling it a “historical day” and a “huge victory” for the country.
“Keeping Bitcoin and other long -term digital resources, the White House is adopting a future approach,” said Nathan McCauley, CEO of the cryptocurrency company Anchorage Digital. “Wait that this move catalyzes the adoption of cryptocurrencies between multiple governments and institutions.”