US crypto reserve clarification coming? Wait til Friday.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly said a bitcoin strategic reserve could be “executed on Friday”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick | Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
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Many in the US woke up Wednesday to bitcoin back above $90,000.
After Donald Trump mentioned five tokens in his Sunday post about a crypto reserve, prices soared. BTC included (despite confusion from some about why this wouldn’t be a BTC-only reserve).
Bitcoin ascended to about $95,000 Sunday, but essentially lost all those gains Monday. It traded in the mid-80s for much of Tuesday.
The early Wednesday surge wasn’t because Trump mentioned BTC in his address to Congress Tuesday night. He didn’t.
Rather it came after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly said a bitcoin strategic reserve is “something the president’s interested in.” He added: “I think you’re going to see it executed on Friday.”
Lutnick, the ex-CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, previously noted that TradFi firms would go “headfirst” into bitcoin when the regulatory environment improves.
Tokens outside of BTC could be treated “positively, but differently” than the largest crypto asset, he told The Pavlovic Today. I applaud the journalist who was able to chat with Lutnick about this. But I still take the comments with a grain of salt.
It seems kind of noncommittal. Trump’s interested in it and Lutnick thinks it will happen.
The best us onlookers can do is first see what the administration says at Friday’s crypto summit. Then go from there.
Chief bitcoin bull Michael Saylor said he was invited to the event. CNBC asked him if he thought any assets not named bitcoin should be in a US crypto reserve?
His response: “I think if you’re looking out over the next 100 years trying to figure out how you capitalize a nation-state or a country, what you want is a digital commodity.”
That would be bitcoin.
“But if you have a sovereign wealth fund, then I think it’s well within the rights of the leader of the nation to decide to put proprietary assets, securities, tokens and the like into it,” Saylor added.
Trump’s executive order gives the Working Group until late July to make policy recommendations, including about a “national digital asset stockpile.” So don’t expect to know everything on Friday.
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