Last week America officially started a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, but the Market doesn’t seem to care yet.

Last Week Macro Arguably Mattered More Than Policy

Trump and macro dominated last week. On Sunday night, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would “move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA.” In a follow-up post he belatedly brought up bitcoin and ethereum. Crypto assets immediately pumped on the news, especially the assets that received a surprise mention: XRP, SOL, and ADA. A trader on the decentralized perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid reportedly profited over $1.6 million by taking a 50x leveraged long position on BTC and ETH ahead of the announcement. Despicable insider trading that is unfortunately endemic in crypto.

The next day, the S&P500 dipped as much as 3%, causing every asset except for ADA to close lower than before the Sunday pump. Bitcoin has since moved up a bit, while the others remained flat. Then on Thursday Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR). As if to prove a point to people not convinced that markets are often irrational in the short term, the price of bitcoin promptly dropped. Bravo!

To be fair to the fickle markets, there were a number of factors that contributed to the decline. The S&P500 was down 1.9% on the day, over 4.5% since Monday. The SBR, while historic in nature, wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. Unlike the aspirational bill being pushed by Senator Lummis, the current SBR won’t be using taxpayer funds to buy bitcoin.

The Executive Order also established a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile (DAS), consisting of digital assets other than bitcoin forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings. To make it clear, the reserve will contain only bitcoin, while the DAS is for all the other riff-raff. Both will be initially capitalized from assets forfeited to the government through criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings.

Aside from the asset composition, the key differences between the two are: 1) the reserve will actively try to acquire more bitcoin and has a policy of not selling, while the stockpile will not seek to acquire

The overall reaction on CT to Trump’s EO has been tepid, no doubt due to the price action. The price of bitcoin looks beholden in the short term to macro considerations. However, over time, I think this will be recognized as a historical event. I think it’s likely that this will be remembered as the official beginning of the arms race for nations to hold bitcoin.