A strategic reserve of bitcoins has been a big part of the cryptocurrency debate ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, but does the incoming 47th president have other ideas in mind?
Solana’s SOL, Ripple’s be the first in the United States”, including SOL, XRP and Circle. USDC stablecoin.
SOL jumped more than 8% to $217 following the report, while XRP continued this week’s advance to reach $3.35, just shy of its 2018 record price, according to data source CoinGecko. HBAR, the native token of the Hedera Hashgraph network founded by the pseudonymous Texas-based firm, was not mentioned in the story, but rose more than 10% to its highest price since early December.
That led the CoinDesk 20 index to a 5% gain over the past 24 hours, far outpacing bitcoin’s 0.5% gain to just under $100,000.
Anticipation among crypto investors is building for Trump’s inauguration next week and the possible announcement of day one executive orders focused on the digital asset industry. Trump promised during the campaign to position the United States as a leader in the crypto space, including creating a national reserve of bitcoins. Senator Cynthia Lummis also introduced the BITCOIN Act in July, proposing to acquire 5% of the bitcoin supply, while some US states are also exploring or have introduced legislation to create a reserve for the asset.
not so fast
While some token holders might be salivating at the idea of the government purchasing cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin, market watchers expressed concern.
“This is a ridiculous idea and will never happen,” said Quinn Thompson, founder of hedge fund Lekker Capital, in an X post.
“It’s not the government’s place to make venture capital bets on altcoins,” Thompson told CoinDesk. “This rumor of a strategic reserve for currencies other than BTC is another example of how people are taking what would otherwise be a bad idea and running it as fact.”
Anthony Georgiades, general partner at investment firm Innovating Capital, said that while it is “extremely positive” to promote US-based innovation, the potential “nationalization of digital assets” could weaken efforts to decentralize blockchain economies.
“As things stand today, there is really only one token that is sufficiently and purely decentralized and that is bitcoin,” he said in an interview on the CoinDesk Markets Daily show. “All of these other projects have fundamental strengths and capacity toward a path toward that level of decentralized spirit. This nationalization of digital assets could potentially weaken those efforts over time.”
Read more: Why Litecoin could be the next cryptocurrency to get its ETF
