The Trump administration, and many of its supporters, have apparently fallen in love with Bitcoin, the creation of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto who launched the digital cryptocurrency built on blockchain in January 2009, and then disappeared two years later leaving behind a personal stash of an estimated 1 million Bitcoins.
It should be noted that none of those coins, now worth an estimated $82 billion, has ever been traded or sold.
At the recent Bitcoin Policy Institute event, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called Bitcoin a symbol of American freedom, innovation, and resilience. He urged the U.S. to adopt Bitcoin as a strategic reserve, in his view a necessary step to help maintain U.S. leadership in the global economy and especially the technology sector.
Bitcoin, he said, represents core American values.
Also at the Bitcoin Policy Institute event, Michael Saylor, whose MicroStrategy company purchased over 400,000 Bitcoins, framed Bitcoin as an essential asset and encouraged the U.S. to ensure the procurement of 1 to 4 million Bitcoins over the next decade.
Saylor, noting that President Trump had recently called Bitcoin the “only truly decentralized cryptocurrency,” said the digital coin is a potential world “superpower.”
He added that “four thousand trillion dollars of global capital is on the move,” transitioning from physical and financial assets into the digital realm – specifically, the Bitcoin network, which controls 99% of power within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Only Bitcoin, Saylor said, and U.S. Treasuries, have the liquidity and global trust required to serve as reliable reserve assets worldwide.
The President, in his third day in office, had issued an executive order for the creation of a U.S. Strategic Crypto Reserve that would include Ripple, Solana, and Cardano cryptocurrencies but with Bitcoin and Ethereum serving as the “heart of the Reserve.” He also called for a separate stockpile of other digital assets. He called on lawmakers to “provide regulatory certainty for dollar-backed stablecoins and the digital assets market.”
But not everyone was thrilled.
The Wall Street Journal called a crypto reserve “fool’s gold,” while other investors pointed to gold as the ultimate reserve asset. Indeed, central banks worldwide are now hoarding gold, with China, India, and Poland topping the list of nations that have added over 1,000 metric tons of gold to national stockpiles just last year.
While Bitcoin’s valuation is, as recent events have shown, susceptible to macroeconomic uncertainty, stablecoins (also endorsed by President Trump) are less volatile than other coins because their value is pegged to real-world assets, including the U.S. dollar.
Stablecoins have served as the main conduit for crypto trading and their use in payment systems is increasing in popularity. Sen. Bill Haggerty (R, TN) last month introduced a bill to create a predictable regulatory environment for these coins.
On the opposite side were voices like that of Bitwise’s Alpha Strategies, who advocated for a Bitcoin-only reserve.
Park said it was a “huge miscalculation” and that the President had underestimated “just how crucial it was for the Strategic Reserve to focus solely on Bitcoin.”
These criticisms by Park and other crypto enthusiasts suggest that the inclusion of altcoins might ruin the proposal’s chances for Congressional approval.
Still others question the wisdom of “putting all our eggs in one basket,” especially given the ongoing mystery of just how and why Bitcoin was created – and whatever happened to “Satoshi Nakamoto.”
Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass recently suggested that “Satoshi Nakamoto” and Bitcoin itself might be creations of MSS, the Chinese intelligence service. Bass fears that “Satoshi” may have been created to potentially disrupt the economic dominance of the U.S. and undermine the value of the U.S. dollar globally.
The presumption is that this anonymous programmer, skilled in cryptology, finance, and spycraft, solely created a $2 trillion currency and concealed his identity from the entire world – yet he has not touched his own crypto wealth in the past 14 years.
Is Satoshi dead?
Was he identified and held hostage by a powerful entity?
Does it matter?
In recounting China’s history with cryptocurrency, Investopedia contributor Rakesh Sharma pointed out that China was one of the first countries whose people embraced cryptocurrency and that the first crypto exchange, BTC China, opened in 2011, the same year “Satoshi” disappeared.
Yet today, China has banned all cryptocurrency transactions as it is reportedly developing its own new digital currency.
So what if the Chinese did create Bitcoin?
Why would they create a cryptocurrency, backed only by its reputation – essentially a fiat cryptocurrency backed by no real-world assets?
One thing is for sure – President Trump’s “made in America” mantra implies that the best digital assets upon which the U.S. could rely for long-term strategic and economic security would be “made in America” by Americans. Or at least brought under the control of the U.S. government.
Does Bitcoin fit that description?
To that end, should we not be giving priority to cryptocurrencies that are U.S.-registered, U.S.-based, U.S.-regulated, U.S.-audited, and U.S. publicly reported?
Questions abound and as the decentralized financial market begins to congeal in America, answers and clarity pertaining to the future of our financial system are direly warranted.