Trump relieves crypto slump with new promises about a US reserve
03/03/2025 21:54
Donald Trump was able to reverse the first slump in digital assets since he took office with some new promises about a U.S. strategic reserve of cryptocurrencies.
Donald Trump was able to reverse the first slump in digital assets since he took office with some new promises about a U.S. strategic reserve of cryptocurrencies.
The president said Sunday in a social media post on Truth Social that such a reserve would include bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), solana (SOL) and ada (ADA). He had not previously not spelled out which digital assets would be included.
The new disclosure sent the value of these digital assets soaring, reversing a slump that had taken hold in recent weeks and accelerated last week as bitcoin experienced its worst correction since a 2022 meltdown.
Bitcoin's price, which had dipped as low as roughly $78,000 last Friday, rose above $94,000 on Sunday. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is currently up 8% since Trump’s post, although still below its all time high above $109,000 the day of Trump's inauguration in January.
The world’s second largest cryptocurrency, ether (ETH) is up 7% since Trump’s post. Solana (SOL) is up 16%. XRP (XRP) has climbed more than 20%. Cardano’s ADA coin (ADA) has soared over 50%.
The inclusion of Solana, XRP and ADA would be a major boost for those digital currencies, which don’t carry as much support on Wall Street as bitcoin or ether.
“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration,” Trump said in his post.
The president is also participating in the cryptocurrency industry. Just before his inauguration, Trump’s team launched an official meme coin for the 47th president (TRUMP) along with one for first lady Melania Trump (MELANIA) on the Solana blockchain. Those memecoins are up 14% and 2% since Trump's Truth Social post.
The president’s namesake Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) also has announced plans to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund under its new Truth.Fi brand.
The strategic reserve idea is one of Trump’s biggest promises to the crypto world, something he touted while on the campaign trail last year while pledging to make the US the "crypto capital of the planet."
But it is not yet clear how it would work exactly, or whether it would require an act of Congress.
The president signed a crypto-focused executive order in January that called for a newly formed presidential working group on digital assets to “evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile.”
It also said the group would propose "criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts."
"We're still in the very early stages of this, but that's one of the first things we're going to look at is the feasibility of a bitcoin reserve," Trump's AI and crypto czar David Sacks said in early February.
More details may be available this Friday at a crypto summit, where Trump is expected to deliver a speech.
What would need Congressional approval is a US government crypto buying program discussed by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, which would call for the Federal Reserve to purchase more bitcoin using 1970s-era certificates for gold reserves.
"We need to help people understand that short-term volatility is going to happen with bitcoin — it always has,” she told Yahoo Finance last Friday.
“The goal of a strategic reserve is to buy or convert current assets into bitcoin and then hold them ... that way, we can remove the short-term volatility from the equation and look at this as a long-term strategic asset."
She said there is more work to do to help people understand “the reason why we should have it,” and that it can interplay with the world reserve currency status of the US dollar.
“We think they are very complimentary," Lummis told Yahoo Finance Friday.
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
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