Bitcoins
Update (March 7, 3:10 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information from a White House fact sheet.
Update (March 7, 12:55 am UTC): This article has been updated to add more information from David Sacks’ X post and information on US government crypto holdings.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that creates a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” and a “Digital Asset Stockpile,” both of which will initially use cryptocurrency forfeited in government criminal cases.
“Just a few minutes ago, President Trump signed an Executive Order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks said in a March 7 X post.
”The Reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings,” he added.
Additionally, a March 6 fact sheet from the White House said the order also establishes a “U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile,” which Sacks said would be made up of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.
JUST NOW!
President Trump signs an Executive Order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile ???????? pic.twitter.com/N9p2sQknVS
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) March 7, 2025
Bloomberg had earlier reported that Trump was expected to sign an executive order establishing a Bitcoin reserve during the White House Crypto Summit on March 7, with one option that included seeding it with government-owned crypto.
Sacks said the Bitcoin reserve was “a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency,” and the US wouldn’t sell any Bitcoin put in the reserve.
“It will be kept as a store of value,” he added.
The White House said that Bitcoin owned by the Treasury Department would seed the reserve, and other federal agencies “will evaluate their legal authority” to transfer any Bitcoin they own into the reserve.
It added the Treasury and Commerce secretaries would make “budget-neutral strategies” for buying more Bitcoin for the reserve, “provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”
As for the digital asset stockpile, Sacks said its purpose is the “responsible stewardship of the government’s digital assets under the Treasury Department.”
Notably, he added that the government wouldn’t buy additional cryptocurrencies for the stockpile “beyond those obtained through forfeiture proceedings,” and the Treasury Secretary “may determine strategies for responsible stewardship, including potential sales” from the stockpile.
Days earlier, on March 3, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that the crypto reserve would include XRP (XRP), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA).
He later added Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) would be “the heart” of the reserve.
Arkham Intelligence data shows the US government doesn’t hold any XRP, SOL or ADA among the $18.28 billion worth of crypto under its control.
Related: Trump’s World Liberty bought $20M worth of crypto ahead of March 7 summit
Its largest holding is 198,109 Bitcoin, worth $17.87 billion. Its ETH holdings are worth $119 million, the third-largest holding behind $122 million worth of the stablecoin Tether (USDT).
However, Sacks claimed there had never been a complete audit of the government’s crypto holdings, and Trump’s latest order “directs a full accounting of the federal government’s digital asset holdings.”
The White House said that agencies must give a full accounting of their crypto holdings to the Treasury Secretary and the President’s crypto working group established in January through an executive order to study the creation of a crypto stockpile.
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