A Truth Social post on Sunday, where President Donald Trump reiterated plans for a “U.S. Crypto Reserve” and praised several specific coins, is drawing ire in the crypto community.
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The post gave a bump to a floundering market, but the currencies picked had skeptics convinced the announcement was a ploy to boost the bottom line of people in his administration.
Trump claimed he would make the U.S. “the Crypto Capital of the World” and create a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” that included a specific set of currencies: Ripple, Solana, and Cardano.
David Sacks, the tech entrepreneur appointed as Trump’s AI and Crypto Czar, reportedly had significant investments in Solana, one of the currencies slated for purchase by the potential reserve.
After Sacks promoted the reserve news on X, one user responded, “Crypto Czar @davidsacks47 has a massive conflict-of-interest with this announcement that folks should be aware of. A new level of corruption.”
According to Sacks, he once held $1 billion worth of Solana. However, he told the Financial Times he diveste his holdings.
“I sold all my cryptocurrency (including BTC, ETH, and SOL) prior to the start of the administration,” Sacks wrote.
Prices of the coins shot up, with Ripple, Solana, and Cardano jumping in value Sunday.
Both Ripple and Solana are back to their previous prices, while Cardano is still riding the bump.
Another X user labeled the reserve a “world-historic heist,” funneling “billions in taxpayer dollars into the pockets of their (Trump’s and Sacks’) buddies.”
Shortly after the post, the president added an addendum, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Several big investments yesterday in the two coins also raised eyebrows.
While the exact policies around Trump’s Crypto Strategic Reserve are unclear, strategic reserves tend to stockpile commodities in order to back currency.
More information on the Crypto Strategic Reserve could come Friday, when Trump will host a Crypto Summit at the White House.
But the announcement didn’t fly with the crypto community, which viewed the post as transactional.
“His only reason for tweeting is to manipulate the market for his cronies to make millions due to foreknowledge of him tweeting,” wrote one Redditor.
“This is a pump and dump. The president has no powers, only Congress can pass law for crypto to be a ‘strategic reserve.’ The rich get richer,” wrote another.
Trump’s post comes amid a slump in the cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoin, currently the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, has fallen more than 19% since hitting its all-time high of $109,114 on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration.
And while some appreciate the president stepping in at a volatile time, other crypto proponents didn’t want the government collecting coins.
Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, decried a government fund. “It’s wrong to steal my money for grift on the left; it’s also wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes,” he wrote.
But this isn’t the first time Trump has been accused of scuzzy behavior around crypto.
Three days before his inauguration, Trump faced backlash for launching his own coin, $Trump, encouraging supporters to invest in it.
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