White House Crypto Czar David Sacks said Friday that the Trump administration has not yet had any conversations about selling off reserve government assets like gold to buy up more Bitcoin—but indicated that key federal departments will soon weigh such considerations.
“There’s been no conversation about that,” Sacks told Decrypt about potential plans to sell off assets like gold to acquire more Bitcoin for the federal government’s newly announced Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. “I see people speculating about that online.”
“Ultimately, it’ll be up to the Secretary of the Treasury and also the Secretary of Commerce to determine if there are budget-neutral ways of adding to our Bitcoin Reserve,” he said. “But we have not had conversations about what those might be yet.”
Last night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that will hold the nearly 200,000 BTC, worth roughly $17 billion at today’s prices, that the U.S. has in its possession thanks to criminal and civil forfeitures.
The order elaborated, however, that the Treasury and Commerce Departments “shall develop strategies for acquiring additional Government BTC provided that such strategies are budget neutral and do not impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers.”
Budget neutrality is a key sticking point for the White House, not only because of public perception but also because congressional approval is generally required for initiatives that involve new uses of taxpayer funds.
Earlier on Friday, a senior White House official told Decrypt that Bitcoin “deserves special treatment” over altcoins like Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano—because it is more secure, more decentralized, and doesn’t have an issuer.
“You can think of [Bitcoin’s] $2 trillion market cap like a bug bounty—trying to find holes in the [network’s] security,” Sacks said Friday. “And no one’s ever been able to do it.”
“So we believe that it is special,” he said.
While Bitcoin is in a league of its own in the newly announced strategic reserve, other cryptocurrencies seized by the U.S. government in civil and criminal forfeitures will be pooled to create a Digital Assets Stockpile, according to Thursday’s executive order.
The White House clarified Friday that whereas Bitcoin will be held indefinitely by the U.S. government in a “Digital Fort Knox,” altcoins in the Digital Assets Stockpile may be sold off at the Treasury Secretary’s discretion.
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