Cryptocurrencies rallied on Sunday after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. will include five digital assets in a new strategic reserve, in a nod to an industry he promised a major windfall if elected.
Trump said, in posts on his Truth Social platform, that an executive order on digital assets he signed in January will see America build up a “crypto strategic reserve” of Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, SOL and ADA.
“I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World,” he wrote. “We are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
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As of Sunday afternoon, the digital assets rose from 9 percent to 58 percent. Their inclusion in the planned reserve had not been previously disclosed by Trump’s administration.
Across the entire global industry, the market capitalization rose about $270 billion to just over $3.18 trillion in the two hours after the announcement, according to CoinGeck.
Trump, who has promised to the be the country’s “first crypto president,” initially sparked some confusion by only explicitly mentioning XRP, SOL, and ADA as being included in the new national crypto stockpile, before clarifying that Bitcoin and Ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap and which he expressed “love” for, “will be the heart of the reserve.”
He did not immediately state how the new reserve will be set up or function and if he will seek to establish it with congressional approval or through executive powers.
Trump—whose family has crypto interests in decentralized finance platform World Liberty Financial and multiple struggling meme coins—won widespread backing in the crypto industry during the 2024 campaign by promising to introduce a wave of friendly policies.
That stance contrasted with the Biden administration, which tasked regulators to crack down on financial crimes and money laundering in the sector in order to protect American consumers.
Trump first floated the idea of creating a national bitcoin stockpile at a bitcoin convention in Nashville last July.
That led to a rush of investors piling into BTC after his election, hoping the asset would soon be boosted with the backing of the world’s most powerful economic actor: the almighty US government.
However, when Trump introduced his crypto executive order in January, the language fell short of expectations. Trump called only for the “potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.”
The hedging around the stockpile as a potential initiative, as well as a failure to mention Bitcoin, triggered selloffs, in particular among Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
As a result, Bitcoin has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, and prior to Trump’s announcement on Sunday had fallen roughly 28 percent from a record high of $109,000 recorded in late January.
Other digital currencies have fallen sharply, in some cases erasing nearly all their gains since Trump’s November election win.
Trump will host the first White House Crypto Summit on Friday, which will be led by White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks and Bo Hines, who is leading a presidential council on digital assets.
