Donald Trump will do something ‘crazy’ or ‘something great’ with bitcoin strategic reserve policyBy business reporter David ChauTopic:Cryptocurrency1h ago1 hours agoTue 24 Dec 2024 at 7:22pmUS president-elect Donald Trump has pledged to make America the “crypto capital of the planet”. (Reuters: Brian Snyder)It’s no secret that Donald Trump was dead against bitcoin and cryptocurrencies a few years ago.During his first term as US president, Trump said cryptocurrencies are “not money”, and that its value was “highly volatile and based on thin air”.Fast forward to 2024, the Republican politician changed his tune.During his re-election campaign, Mr Trump was the headline speaker at a bitcoin convention. He launched his own crypto venture (World Liberty Financial) and received millions of dollars in donations (in the form of bitcoin, ether and XRP) from supporters, including a handful of pro-crypto billionaires.Since pledging to make America the “crypto capital of the planet”, Trump’s promises to enact pro-cryptocurrency policies have helped push the value of bitcoin to new records (as high as $US108,000 ($173,000) in mid-December).Trump has also appointed cryptocurrency advocates to key roles in his administration.However, one of Trump’s more controversial policies is the creation of a “strategic bitcoin reserve” — which would essentially require the US to stockpile bitcoin and hold onto it for a substantial period of time.At this stage, there isn’t much detail on what a strategic reserve would look like.Some analysts expect the value of the highly volatile cryptocurrency to keep rising, particularly if the US government is using taxpayer money to purchase large amounts.Loading…What is a strategic reserve?When people talk about “strategic reserves”, they’re most likely thinking about oil.One of the best-known examples is the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), an emergency stockpile of crude oil that was created by Gerald Ford’s government in 1975.This was in response to the Arab oil embargo, which caused great damage to the US economy (with petrol prices, inflation and unemployment surging).More recently, in 2022, these crude stockpiles came in handy — when the Biden administration released a record 180 million barrels from the SPR to dampen the impact of an oil price spike caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.China also has strategic reserves, containing millions of tonnes worth of copper, aluminium, zinc and other metals that are crucial to its property and tech industries.Canada also gets a special mention for being the only country to have a maple syrup strategic reserve — the supply of which fell to 3.1 million kilos last year, its lowest in 16 years.The idea is that these commodity stockpiles can be released during emergencies, to minimise the impact of supply shortages and inflation shocks.It’s quite clear that bitcoin, which has only been in existence for 15 years, has nothing in common with oil, industrial metals and maple syrup.
Mer. Dic 25th, 2024
