The crowd was expecting the announcement of the Bitcoin strategic reserve. On July 22, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming posted “Big Things…In Store This Week” on X, two days before Fox Business announced that she would “announce legislation for a strategic Bitcoin reserve” during the conference.
Lummis appeared before the crowd just after Trump left to announce a “gift to President Donald Trump”: the bitcoin reserve bill she was drafting.
“This is our Louisiana buy time,” she said, clarifying that the bill would take “the bitcoin that President Trump just mentioned and put it in the reserve…[and] this is just the beginning.
“Over five years, the United States will collect 1 million bitcoins,” she added. “Five percent of the world’s bitcoin, and it will be held for at least 20 years and can be used for one purpose: to reduce our debt. »
The bill further provides that the United States will “convert the excess reserves of our 12 Federal Reserve Banks into bitcoin over five years,” so that instead of holding a depreciating asset (the U.S. dollar, which, according to her, was “designed to depreciate at least 2 percent per year”), it will hold an asset with growth potential.
There is no doubt that the value of bitcoin has increased over time, although it is no higher today than it was before Trump’s keynote speech. It peaked at around $69,000 this morning and, right after Trump’s speech, is around $68,400.
Trump’s desire to add bitcoin to the country’s strategic reserve does not mean it will happen, even if he is elected. Ari Paul, founder of BlockTower Capital, an institutional investment firm specializing in crypto, took against 1”.
The US Federal Reserve currently includes assets like gold and foreign currencies (fiat). They are used as lines of credit to maintain the stability of the U.S. economy, particularly in times of crisis. Many in the crypto community criticized him for encouraging the US Treasury to “print money” during Covid-19, which led to sustained inflation. According to Lummis, adding Bitcoin to the reserve could “cut our debt in half.”
Trump dramatically changed his tone on bitcoin from his presidential tenure, when he said it “sounds like a scam.” He has since described himself as “good” with crypto.
On Saturday, he greeted the crowd as “high IQ individuals” as opposed to the “low IQ individuals” he is running against (referring to presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris). He credited the room with predicting inflation: “You understand inflation better than anyone,” he said. “They didn’t listen to you.”
Trump’s running mate, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, is also a fan of crypto. He reported owning between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of cryptocurrencies in 2022. At the start of the Bitcoin conference on July 25, Trump reportedly received around $4 million worth of cryptocurrencies in campaign donations, including bitcoin, Ether, Ripple and US dollars. -USDC pegged stablecoin.
For this reason, we could be at Trump’s mercy. “Bitcoin does not threaten the dollar. The behavior of the current US government threatens the dollar,” he said. “The danger to our financial future doesn’t come from crypto, it comes from Washington, DC.”
