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Cryptocurrency prices jumped on Sunday after President Donald Trump said a US strategic reserve of digital assets would include bitcoin as well as lesser-traded tokens, providing a jolt to an industry that has cosied up to the White House.
Trump, who has courted the crypto industry, wrote on his Truth Social account the strategic reserve would “elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden administration”.
A reserve has been championed by crypto traders, who believe something akin to Fort Knox for gold — which would buy and hold bitcoin — would offer legitimacy to the asset class.
Proposals are already working their way through state and federal legislatures. One Republican-backed Senate bill looks to direct the US Treasury to buy 1mn bitcoin, worth roughly $94bn based on current market prices.
The bills have faced opposition, including from some Republican lawmakers who say they put taxpayers’ funds at risk, and the reserve itself will raise concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Some Trump advisers — including the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency tsar David Sacks — have investments tied to the market.
In his first days in office, Trump signed an executive order supporting digital assets and blockchain technology and vowed to create a national stockpile of cryptocurrency — moves that investors celebrated.
On Sunday, Trump said bitcoin and ethereum would be “the heart of the reserve”, adding that it would also include Solana, XRP and Cardano.
“I will make sure the US is the Crypto Capital of the World,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
His comments gave prices across the industry a lift after weeks of selling pressure, as cryptocurrencies have been hit by a market shake-out of riskier assets.
Bitcoin rose 10 per cent to $94,118 while Ethereum gained 12 per cent to $2,501, according to CoinDesk. Solana, the token that represents the blockchain that hosts most memecoins — including Trump’s own coin, climbed 24 per cent to $174.64.
Ada, which represents the Cardano blockchain, soared 60 per cent to $1.04 per token. XRP, the coin affiliated to payments group Ripple, rose 32 per cent to $2.87.
“It’s been an extraordinary day for currencies like Cardano. A strategic reserve is the holy grail of the crypto market, everything they could hope for, going from a sort of experiment to the reserve currency of the US,” said Oskar Åslund, chief strategy officer at AKJ, a European crypto hedge fund brokerage.
He noted that digital prices had fallen steadily since the inauguration, at odds with Trump’s claim to be a pro-crypto president.
“It’s not been going the way he probably was expecting. The timing is pretty good for him.”
Traders have cited their frustration that the Trump administration has not moved faster to enact some of the reforms he promised on the campaign trail.
His administration has been quicker to halt enforcement actions against the industry, which the top securities regulator under former president Joe Biden had described as the “Wild West . . . rife with fraud, scams and abuse”.
Coinbase, a crypto exchange, said last month that the SEC had agreed to drop its landmark case against the company, which it had accused of failing to register as a national securities exchange, broker or clearing agency.
Executives at other groups, including crypto exchanges Gemini and OpenSea, have also indicated that securities regulators have dropped investigations into their businesses.
The White House will host the first cryptocurrency summit this month, and traders will be closely watching for indications from the president’s working group that they are moving closer to the launch of a crypto stockpile.
Trump courted the crypto industry while on the campaign trail, headlining a bitcoin conference in Nashville last July.
Speaking last month, Trump said that he had ended “Joe Biden’s war on bitcoin and crypto. We ended that war totally.” He added that his campaign had won “that vote entirely”.
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