Solana, Ripple’s XRP Jump as Donald Trump Reportedly Mulls ‘America-First’ Crypto Strategic Reserve, but Experts Suggest Different
A strategic bitcoin reserve was a big part of the crypto discussion ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, but does the incoming 47th president have other tokens on his mind?
to Solana SOLRipple’s XRP and Hedera HBAR was among the altcoins outperforming on Thursday, in part thanks to a NYPost reports that Trump is “welcome” to the idea of creating an “America-first strategic reserve” of tokens including SOL, XRP and Circle’s USDC stablecoin.
SOL jumped more than 8% to $217 following the report, while XRP continued advance this week reached $3.35, just shy of its 2018 record price, per data source CoinGecko. HBAR, the native token of the Hedera Hashgraph network founded by the pseudonymous Texas-based company, was not mentioned in the story, but rallied more than 10% to its strongest price since early December.
That led to CoinDesk Index 20 to a 5% gain in the past 24 hours, far outstripping bitcoin’s 0.5% rise to just $100,000.
Anticipation among crypto investors is building for Trump’s inauguration next week, and the potential announcement of early-day executive orders targeting the digital asset industry. Trump promised during the campaign to position the US as a leader in the crypto space including the creation of a national bitcoin stockpile. Senator Cynthia Lummis also introduced the BITCOIN LAW in July proposing to take 5% of the bitcoin supply, while some US states have as well exploration or put forward law to create a reserve for the asset.
Not so fast
While some token holders may be salivating at the idea of the government buying cryptos other than bitcoin, market observers have raised concerns.
“It’s a ridiculous idea and will never happen,” said Quinn Thompson, founder of hedge fund Lekker Capital, in a X post.
“It’s not the government’s place to make venture capital bets on altcoins,” Thompson explained to CoinDesk. “This rumor of a strategic reserve for other, non-BTC coins is another example of people taking what is a bad idea and running with it as fact.”
Anthony Georgiades, general partner of investment firm Innovating Capital, said that while it is “extremely positive” to promote US-based innovation, the potential “nationalization of digital assets” could undermine efforts to -decentralize blockchain economies.
“As it stands right now, there’s really only one token that’s sufficiently decentralized and that’s bitcoin,” he said in an interview on the CoinDesk Markets Daily show. “These other projects have all the key strengths and capabilities toward a path toward that level of decentralized ethos. The nationalization of these digital assets could potentially undermine those efforts over time. of time.”
Read more: Why Litecoin Could Be the Next Crypto to Get Its ETF
