Pro-Trump techies enraged by president's crypto reserve announcement, causing early rift
Some of President Trump's most vocal supporters in tech took to social media to slam his latest proposal for a crypto strategic reserve.
President Donald Trump counted on crypto execs and investors for a hefty portion of his 2024 campaign funds. He promised to reward them handsomely if elected by slashing regulations and by turning the U.S. into "the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world."
The president got off to a quick start, signing an executive order calling for the establishment of a working group on digital assets and pardoning Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. The SEC also dropped its years-long probe into Coinbase.
While those moves were lauded by the most vocal techies who backed Trump's candidacy, over the weekend the president took it a step too far in their view. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump announced the creation of a strategic crypto reserve for the U.S. that would include not just bitcoin but several other digital currencies — ether, XRP, Solana's SOL token and Cardano's ADA.
For the most part, Trump's crypto backers all wanted a strategic bitcoin reserve. Such a move would entail using cash to buy bitcoin, which is widely viewed by crypto enthusiasts as a smart way to deploy capital into a decentralized currency that's an alternative to hard money. As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on X, bitcoin offers a "clear story as successor to gold."