Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology

On January 23, Trump issued an Executive Order on Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to promote United States leadership in digital assets and financial technology while protecting economic liberty, it is hereby ordered as follows: …

I leave it to the reader to read the rest of the nonsense because Trump has no such authority to do what he says.

The article below sums up the situation nicely.

Strategic Corruption Reserve

Please consider the Strategic Corruption Reserve

The term “Crypto Strategic Reserve” is a non sequitur since there are no plausible circumstances in which the United States government holding large amounts of cryptocurrencies would be of any strategic benefit.

A strategic oil reserve is beneficial in the event of a shortage of oil imports or a disruption in domestic oil production. When would a reserve of cryptocurrency be useful? Under what circumstance would the United States need to make a transaction with a crypto token that could not also be made with the dollar?

It raises the question of why the United States would divert taxpayer resources to obtain these tokens.

While the public benefit is unclear, the biggest economy in the world buying up large amounts of various crypto tokens would be a financial windfall for the companies that created these tokens and the people who already own them. Those companies and investors also have close political and financial ties to Trump.

For XRP, being included in Trump’s proposed national crypto reserve is a major coup for its creator, Ripple.

Introduced in 2012, XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency and was designed to speed up international transactions by using XRP as a bridge currency for transactions made through Ripple’s payment network. Most of the large financial institutions that use Ripple’s platform, however, do not use XRP, so the currency has little value other than as a speculative asset. The currency remains highly centralized, with Ripple owning 48 billion XRP of the 100 billion coins in circulation.

In December 2020, the end of Trump’s first term, the SEC issued charges against Ripple related to XRP, alleging that the token was an unregistered security. Initially a court ruled that XRP is a security in certain transactions but not in others, but the SEC appealed that decision. Although the SEC has abandoned many of its other legal actions against crypto firms, the appeal in the XRP case is still pending.

Ripple’s improving political fortunes is not an accident. The company contributed $5 million worth of XRP to Trump’s inauguration fund, one of the largest corporate contributions. Ripple also donated $45 million dollars to Fairshake, a Super PAC that supported pro-crypto congressional candidates and played a critical role in securing Republican majorities in the House and Senate. The company has since contributed another $25 million to Fairshake ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse attended Trump’s inauguration and earlier in January, he and Ripple’s chief legal officer had dinner with Trump at Mar-A-Lago. The New York Post reported that Garlinghouse is on the shortlist of candidates for Trump’s crypto advisory council.

Garlinghouse praised Trump’s inclusion of smaller and more volatile cryptocurrencies like XRP in the national crypto reserve on X.

Trump himself could also benefit through the bolstering of the Solana protocol, which hosts most memecoins. In January, Trump and his wife Melania both launched their own memecoins on Solana. Including Solana in a crypto reserve may benefit the Solana network and, as a result, boost the value of Trump’s memecoin.

Questions Abound

1. Does the idea of a government-sponsored crypto czar picking crypto winners make any sense?
2. Is a government crypto reserve is antithetical to the original vision of Bitcoin?
3. Is anyone nauseated by this?
4. Is XRP, Ripple the official reserve currency of the US?
5. XRP Ripple? A reserve currency? Seriously?
6. Is Trump for sale to the highest bidder?

No Vested Power to Fund This

There is no vested power for Trump to fund a crypto reserve with taxpayer or Treasury funds.

I am not sure who if anyone would have standing to block a crypto advisory committee, but I fail to see how Trump can get this legally funded without Congress or gifts that would then become government assets that Congress could appropriate.

Even crypto fans should be nauseated by this effort, the hypocrisy, and the obvious inherent corruption.

Will the US Be that Stupid?

Q: What do you mean?
A: Have a crypto reserve.

I don’t know. If Congress approves and funds a crypto reserve, then we will have one.

But we won’t have one by executive order because Trump has no authority to authorize and fund projects.

And if you are foolish enough to be cheering for this, wait until Democrats use their “vested power” to do similar things.

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On a case by case basis, I comment on what Trump is doing.

If you seek constant admiration or panning of Trump, you are in the wrong place.

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