STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE

The notion of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) is almost as old as Bitcoin itself, even if the only ones predicting its formation back then were a handful of tech-futurologists, libertarians, and cypherpunks. Governments at this time didn’t even have Bitcoin on their radar and the idea that they might one day seek to actively stockpile it would have seemed fanciful.

Yet for all the hopium contained within this nascent vision of nation states one day rushing to acquire “digital gold,” there was rationale behind the reasoning. The U.S. had been running a Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) since 1975, hoarding barrels of oil in vast underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. Bitcoin, in comparison, required no physical space to “warehouse” and could be liquidated easily.

With its rising value and fixed supply, Bitcoin was in many ways an ideal commodity for governments to acquire – but it was nevertheless a leftfield idea that would take any nation willing to countenance it into uncharted territory. While various countries assumed ownership of bitcoin over the years from criminal seizures, they generally auctioned it off rather than risk being burdened with its price volatility.

Creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve called for facing that volatility head-on – and for betting that despite market forces and macro events, Bitcoin would eventually go higher. Given the suspicion with which many world leaders viewed digital ocurrency, which they saw as a direct threat to the established financial order, it would take a maverick politician to endorse an SBR and he materialised in the form of Donald J. Trump.

Trump’s Damascene Conversion

During his first term as U.S. President from 2017-2021, Donald Trump expressed public skepticism and disapproval of Bitcoin. However, he then appears to have undergone a Damascene conversion and by 2024 had transformed Bitcoin into a cornerstone of his election campaign. By May 2025, he was publicly lauding Bitcoin as “amazing” and arguing that its existence “takes a lot of pressure off the dollar.”

By this stage, Trump had made history by signing a landmark Executive Order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a parallel U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile (DAS) on March 6. This directive fundamentally altered U.S. policy by formally treating Bitcoin as a national strategic asset. The action marked a pivotal moment in the history of finance and statecraft, elevating a decentralised digital currency from the periphery of society to the very centre of American economic and national security strateg

At this point in time, the U.S. government was already a significant bitcoin holder, having amassed roughly 198,000 BTC, mostly from DOJ seizures, giving the United States the largest known Bitcoin holdings of any government. The reserve technically already existed: it had just not been formalised. Had an SBR been in existence earlier, the government would have profited handsomely. Between 2014 and 2023, the U.S. Marshals Service sold about 195,000 BTC for only $366 million; in 2025 those coins would be worth nearly $19 billion.

Bitcoin activist and legislator Dennis Porter recalls tweeting that Donald Trump was going to announce a United States Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in Nashville on July 18, 2024. “Everyone thought I was insane,” he reflects, “but he did announce it on stage. After my tweet, other politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., came out on stage before Trump and said they were going to announce a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. That put even more pressure on Trump to follow through.”

White House and Political Correspondent at Bitcoin Magazine Frank Corva puts it simplest: “I think if Bitcoin is to succeed, governments around the world are going to have to own some and it's just a natural part of the progression.”

Despite attracting its share of critics – both in politics and in blockchain – the establishment of the United States Strategic Bitcoin Reserve remains a watershed moment for national finance and digital technology. It transforms the U.S. government from a regulator or enforcer into an active, long-term participant in the cryptocurrency market while placing pressure on other nations to follow suit. It is an ambitious experiment that is now playing out in real time with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake.