Will America get a strategic Bitcoin reserve under President Donald Trump? It’s still unclear, but growing hopes over the proposal apparently helped propel the asset on Thursday.
Bitcoin had been trading around $101,000 to $102,000 early Thursday before Senator Cynthia Lummis—a noted Bitcoin advocate, and the sponsor of the “Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness Through Optimized Investment Nationwide Act” (aka Bitcoin Act)—teased imminent news via X (formerly Twitter).
“Big things are coming,” she posted, albeit with the Bitcoin logo substituted for the first letter. “Stay tuned for 10am,” she added in a follow-up post.
Bitcoin immediately surged in price, jumping above $105,000, then dipping back to $103,000, and then jumping higher to a price of nearly $106,000. Nothing came at 10am ET, but at about 10:45am ET, Lummis posted that Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott had named the Wyoming Senator the Chair of the Subcommittee on Digital Assets.
“Digital assets are the future, and if the United States wants to remain a global leader in financial innovation, Congress needs to urgently pass bipartisan legislation establishing a comprehensive legal framework for digital assets and that strengthens the U.S. dollar with a strategic Bitcoin reserve,” said Lummis in a statement.
While some traders had likely been expecting a formal announcement of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, many still took the announcement as good news—because Bitcoin then jumped to $106,732, the highest price since Tuesday, and remains above the $106,000 mark as of this writing. Bitcoin is up almost 3% on the day and nearly 7% this week.
“U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve pretty much confirmed,” wrote Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. “Crypto moving at crypto speed again.”
While “pretty much confirmed” is a subjective interpretation, there has been substantial movement in this direction. Trump ran on a pro-crypto platform and advocated for a national stockpile back at the Bitcoin 2024 conference last July. In recent weeks, following his election win, legislators in several U.S. states have filed bills to potentially establish their own treasury reserves.
Just 42% of bettors expect Trump to establish a national Bitcoin reserve during his first 100 days in office, per data from crypto prediction market platform Polymarket.
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Andrew Hayward
https://decrypt.co/302429/bitcoin-above-106k-reserve-hopes-grow-trump
2025-01-23 16:53:50
