A strategic bitcoin reserve has been a big part of crypto discussions ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, but does the new 47th president have other tokens in mind?
Solana’s SOL, Ripple’s ‘America’ tokens including SOL, XRP and Circle’s. USDC stablecoins.
SOL jumped more than 8% to $217 following the report, while XRP continued its advance this week to reach $3.35, just below its 2018 all-time high price, according to data source CoinGecko. HBAR, the native token of the Hedera Hashgraph network founded by the pseudonymous Texas-based company, was not mentioned in the article but rose more than 10% to its highest price since early December.
This led the CoinDesk 20 Index to a 5% gain over the past 24 hours, significantly outperforming Bitcoin’s 0.5% rise to just under $100,000.
Crypto investors are looking ahead to Trump’s inauguration next week and the potential announcement of day one executive orders focused on the digital asset sector. Trump promised during the campaign to position the United States as a leader in crypto, including creating a national Bitcoin stockpile. Senator Cynthia Lummis also introduced the BITCOIN Act in July, proposing to acquire the 5% of bitcoin’s supply, while some US states are also studying or have proposed legislation to create a reserve for the asset.
Not so fast
While some token holders might salivate at the prospect of the government purchasing cryptos other than bitcoin, market observers have expressed concerns.
“This is a ridiculous idea and will never happen,” Quinn Thompson, founder of hedge fund Lekker Capital, said 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 other non-BTC coins is another example of people taking what would otherwise be a bad idea and using it as fact.”
Anthony Georgiades, general partner at investment firm Innovating Capital, said that while it was “extremely positive” to promote US-based innovation, the possible “nationalization of digital assets” could weaken efforts. aimed at decentralizing blockchain economies.
“As it stands, there is really only one token that is sufficiently and purely decentralized, and that is bitcoin,” he said in an interview on CoinDesk Markets Daily. “These other projects have all the fundamental assets and capacity necessary to achieve this level of decentralized ethics. This nationalization of digital assets could potentially weaken these efforts over time.”
Read more: Why Litecoin could be the next crypto to get its ETF
