Trump’s BTC Reserve ✅ Rally ❌
President's grand Bitcoin vision collides with market reality as crypto prices crash on long-awaited announcement.
Bitcoin plunged 5% in minutes Thursday night as US President Donald Trump's "Digital Fort Knox" reveal burst the crypto bubble. The historic announcement traders had anticipated for months triggered a brutal $225 million sell-off across digital currencies.
"The Reserve will be kept as a store of value," declared White House Crypto Czar David Sacks on X. It pushed investors to dump their holdings upon realising Trump's grand vision amounted to relabelling 198,109 Bitcoin ($17 billion) the government already owned from criminal seizures.
No fresh purchases. No expanded mandate. Just a promise not to sell what they already had.
The Shattered Dream
Last July, Trump had sent crypto markets on a roll by promising a national Bitcoin stockpile.
Just last Monday, he teased a crypto including Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Cardano alongside Bitcoin. That threw traders into a temporary buying frenzy before they all came crashing down.
The executive order signed yesterday merely prevents government from selling existing crypto holdings while creating a separate "Digital Asset Stockpile" for other seized cryptocurrencies.
Thursday's announcement triggered an immediate market bloodbath.
Bitcoin prices collapsed from $91,000 to $85,000 within minutes
Panic spread as traders who'd bet everything on Trump's Bitcoin embrace watched profits evaporate.
The damage rippled through the entire crypto ecosystem.
Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Cardano plummeted 4-8%
Liquidations topped $225 million as leveraged positions imploded
The collapse extended Bitcoin's stunning fall to nearly 20% since Trump's January inauguration — a brutal reality check for investors who'd expected his presidency to fuel a historic rally.
As we write this, its gradually retracing toward the $90K mark.
Battle Lines Drawn
The announcement split the crypto world into warring camps.
Charles Edwards of Capriole Investments didn't mince words: "Most underwhelming outcome... a pig with lipstick," capturing the rage of disappointed traders watching profits vanish.
Even Wall Street expressed doubts. JPMorgan analysts assigned "less than 50% chance" of the reserve surviving congressional scrutiny.
It's not the job of government to run an inferior crypto investment fund, crypto investor Nic Carter fired back.
Despite the immediate chaos, some takeaways remain.
Locks away approximately $18 billion worth of Bitcoin that government can no longer dump on markets
Opens door for "no-cost" strategies to acquire more Bitcoin
Could spark global competition as nations race to secure limited Bitcoin supply
Makes future US Bitcoin ban nearly impossible
"If the government had held the Bitcoin it previously sold, it would be worth over $17 billion today," Sacks noted pointedly, referencing 195,000 BTC sold for just $366 million.
Today's White House Crypto Summit puts industry leaders face-to-face with the administration they once championed. Markets hover anxiously, awaiting clarity on how the government might acquire more Bitcoin without taxpayer funds.
Trump promised a Bitcoin revolution but delivered a bureaucratic rebrand. Yet, in transforming seized criminal assets into national treasure, he may have planted the seed for a solid monetary revolution — one that reshapes global financial power long after the current market tantrum subsides.