White House hosts 1st crypto summit as ‘Strategic Bitcoin Reserve’ fails to satisfy market

U.S. President Donald Trump hosted the inaugural White House crypto summit on Friday, less than a day after his order fell short of expectations regarding the establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which will be merged with already confiscated cryptocurrencies.

“I promised to make America the bitcoin superpower of the world and the crypto capital of the planet. And we’re taking historic action to deliver on that promise,” Trump said, addressing executives from several cryptocurrency firms.

Trump stated that the reserve would serve as “a virtual Fort Knox for digital gold,” housed within the U.S. Treasury. It will initially consist of 200,000 bitcoins seized by the federal government in law enforcement actions.

Additionally, he announced that the Treasury and Commerce departments would “explore new pathways to accumulate additional Bitcoin holdings for the reserve.”

Non-bitcoin digital assets, he added, will be stored separately in a “digital asset stockpile,” where they will be “properly managed.”

Trump slams former government over bitcoin sales

Trump criticized past federal sales of confiscated bitcoin, particularly those conducted during the Biden administration.

“Unfortunately, in recent years, the U.S. government has foolishly sold tens of thousands of bitcoins that could have been worth billions and billions of dollars today,” he said. “But they sold them—mostly during the Biden administration. Not a good move, not a good thing to have done.”

Declaring a new approach, Trump asserted, “From this day on, America will follow the rule that every bitcoin investor knows well: never sell your bitcoin. That’s a little phrase they have. I don’t know if it’s right or not—who the hell knows?” he added.

Despite Trump’s announcement, the cryptocurrency market reacted negatively, with bitcoin declining as investors expressed concerns over the plan. A key issue was that taxpayer funds would not be used to finance the reserve, leading to uncertainty over how the government would acquire additional bitcoin.

Bitcoin, which had reached a daily high of $90,900 on Friday, dropped 2.3% to $86,449 by 7:20 a.m. GMT on Saturday. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization also fell by 2.1% to $2.84 trillion.