President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve and a separate U.S. digital asset stockpile.
“The Reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings,” said David Sacks, the White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar, in a March 6 post on X. “This means it will not cost taxpayers a dime.”
Specifically, the strategic bitcoin reserve will use bitcoin held by the Treasury Department that was forfeited as part of such proceedings, and “other agencies will evaluate their legal authority to transfer any bitcoin owned by those agencies” to the reserve, according to a fact sheet on the order, issued March 6.
“It is estimated that the U.S. government owns about 200,000 bitcoin; however, there has never been a complete audit,” Sacks added in his post on X. “The E.O. directs a full accounting of the federal government’s digital asset holdings.”
The executive order also tasks the Treasury secretary with establishing an office to “administer and maintain control of custodial accounts” for the strategic bitcoin reserve, and states that any bitcoin deposited into the reserve “shall not be sold and shall be maintained as reserve assets of the United States.”
“The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold,’” Sacks said in the X post.
Under the order, the secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce departments are also directed to develop strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, “provided that such strategies are budget neutral and do not impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers.”
"As President Trump works to implement this executive order, I encourage his administration to collaborate with Congress, particularly in regard to the structure and any funding related to the strategic bitcoin reserve," said House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, R-Ark., in a statement March 7.
The reserve is “essentially” a U.S. sovereign wealth fund of crypto assets, similar to the sovereign wealth fund the administration is planning, said Winston Ma, adjunct law professor at New York University and executive director of the university’s Global Public Investment Funds Forum, which analyzes public asset owners, in a statement.
Separately, the order establishes a digital assets stockpile, made up of “digital assets other than bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited in criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings,” according to the fact sheet.
The government will not acquire additional assets for the stockpile beyond those obtained by such proceedings, the fact sheet notes, though the Treasury secretary “may determine strategies for responsible stewardship, including potential sales from the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile.”
On March 2, Trump posted on Truth Social about his plans to create a cryptocurrency strategic reserve, naming five tokens that he wanted to include in such a reserve: bitcoin, ether, Ripple’s XRP token, Solana’s SOL token and Cardano’s ADA token.
However, the executive order issued March 6 does not name any digital assets other than bitcoin.
“There was a lot of blowback, even from within the crypto industry (and from) a lot of people who have otherwise been very supportive of the president's policies," about the possibility that the government would have to purchase such tokens, said Omid Malekan, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.
"To me, the job of the government is to just create fair rules and regulations by which the private sector could compete and build out new technology, new infrastructure; not to start picking winners and losers. And when you start purchasing any cryptocurrency, then that's exactly what you're doing," Malekan added.
Though the administration chose not to go that route, Malekan said he's still not a fan of the initiative, contending it's "both bad for the U.S. government to do any of this and bad for the crypto industry."
However, several crypto executives were supportive.
“Establishing a U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile is a huge moment for both crypto and American leadership on the global stage,” said Nathan McCauley, CEO and co-founder of Anchorage Digital, a crypto custody firm, in a March 6 statement. “By holding bitcoin and other digital assets for the long term, the White House is taking a future-forward approach to bolstering American economic competitiveness — not just for the decade ahead, but for the next century.”
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, said in a March 6 post on X responding to Sacks, "Incredible execution from the Trump administration and a historic moment for Bitcoin and crypto!"
The order came ahead of the White House’s first crypto summit, which it’s hosting March 7, with attendees including “prominent founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry,” Sacks wrote in a Feb. 28 post on X.
