Even the crypto bros don’t love Trump’s proposed crypto reserve

The crypto industry is getting everything it wanted under President Trump. The regulators that crypto firms have blamed for all of their problems have been gutted or made over with friendlier faces who are eager to drop lingering legal challenges. The White House is even hosting an industry roundtable this week. That’s the kind of attention the industry couldn’t have dreamed of under the Biden administration.

The crypto industry is getting everything it wanted under President Donald Trump. The regulators that crypto firms have blamed for all of their problems have been gutted or made over with friendlier faces who are eager to drop lingering legal challenges. The White House is even hosting an industry roundtable this week. That’s the kind of attention the industry could only have dreamed about under the Biden administration. But a surprising backlash emerged from some prominent tech and crypto leaders after the president promised Sunday to establish a “Crypto Strategic Reserve,” which would direct the government to stockpile bitcoin, ethereum and three other tokens. Some commentators don’t like the idea of potentially using taxpayer funds to backstop the price of crypto, a speculative digital asset with limited (some would say nonexistent) underlying value. Others questioned the motive behind including three relatively obscure tokens — Solana, XRP and Cardano — some of which have been backed by Trump’s own crypto czar (more on that in a moment). And investors across the board appeared unhappy with the lack of detail in Trump’s brief social media announcement, as crypto assets, which trade 24/7, fell Monday following a brief spike on Sunday. It’s “wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes,” tweeted Joe Lonsdale, a tech entrepreneur who described himself in this thread as pro-crypto and broadly supportive of the Trump administration. Another tech executive, Michael Bentley of the UK-based Euler Labs, wrote on X that the reserve idea was a “massive fumble.” “A strategic reserve that looks like a retail trader’s 2017 portfolio indicates that the US admin doesn’t really understand the value proposition of bitcoin or the rest of … the crypto market,” Bentley wrote. “Bitcoin will be tarnished with the same brush, making it a net negative policy in the long run.” Others appeared to be squinting to see the upside. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote he was “excited to learn more,” but noted, “just Bitcoin would probably be the best option.”