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A Federal Bitcoin Stockpile? Trump Likes the Idea.

By DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY

A pair of 50-page policy proposals lays out the plan in detail. Discussions about the specifics have taken place with President-elect Donald J. Trump and his advisers, and there have been talks with cabinet nominees about how to pay for it.

On the eve of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the cryptocurrency industry is pushing his incoming administration to create an audacious plan that would have seemed unimaginable just a year ago—a government program to buy and hold billions of dollars in Bitcoin.

As he campaigned last summer, Mr. Trump vowed to create a federal Bitcoin stockpile that would serve as a “permanent national asset” to benefit all Americans. Bitcoin enthusiasts hailed the idea as potentially transformative, claiming it could help reduce the national debt. Mr. Trump could still abandon the plan, and its details are under debate. But industry executives have spent weeks lobbying to shape the proposal, raising hopes that Mr. Trump might act soon after taking office.

In recent days, crypto experts have offered input to David Sacks, a venture capitalist whom Mr. Trump appointed to oversee crypto and artificial intelligence policy, on a possible executive order addressing several areas of cryptocurrency, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The Bitcoin stockpile is part of those discussions, two of them said.

“This could be the day it all matures,” said Pete Rize, an editor at Bitcoin Magazine, an industry publication. “It’s certainly an idea that has come a long way in a short time.”

By some estimates, the United States owns as much as $19 billion in Bitcoin that it has seized from criminals over time—a stash the government has recently moved to sell. Some crypto executives are calling on Mr. Trump to simply hold on to that Bitcoin, which he could most likely do with an executive order. Others are pushing a more ambitious plan in which the government would acquire tens of billions of dollars in new Bitcoin, building a “strategic reserve” they argue could benefit taxpayers in the long run.

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FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2025 | B1