The United States has gotten serious about Bitcoin — though maybe not as serious as some had hoped.
On Thursday, President Trump signed an Executive Order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile.
Essentially, this means that the U.S. government now treats Bitcoin as a reserve asset, similar to gold. However, it does not mean that the government will be buying Bitcoin. From the White House announcement: "The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings."
"The United States will not sell bitcoin deposited into this Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which will be maintained as a store of reserve assets," the text of the Order further states.
For a video of Trump signing the order whilst seemingly hearing about it for the first time ever, check out below.
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The Order also states that the "Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers." It's unclear what these strategies will be, but at least it leaves some hope for Bitcoin bulls that the U.S. will in the future acquire some additional Bitcoin.
The other part of the Order talks about the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, which consists of "digital assets other than bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited in criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings."
For these, however, it's clearly stated that "the government will not acquire additional assets for the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile beyond those obtained through forfeiture proceedings."
Sorry, the U.S. govt. will not be buying your altcoin bags.
With Bitcoin price mostly going up since the digital asset was created 15 years ago, the U.S. govt. missed out on some easy gains by selling some of the Bitcoins it acquired through various means — according to the White House, "premature sales of bitcoin have already cost U.S. taxpayers over $17 billion."
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According to freshly appointed crypto czar David Sacks, the U.S. govt. still owns "about 200,000" BTC. One of the tasks of the U.S. government's new Crypto Task Force will be to audit and evaluate how much crypto it owns, exactly.
