from Hacker News

The “strategic reserve” exposes crypto as the scam it always was

by kolchinski on 3/3/25, 12:08 AM with 140 comments

• by peterldowns on 3/3/25, 12:27 AM

  Can anyone who is pro-crypto (particularly: btc, eth) make the steelman argument for why a "strategic reserve" is necessary for these cryptocurrencies? Or even beneficial? I've been involved in the industry in various ways for years and I fundamentally don't understand why the government owning a lot of btc/eth is advantageous. I understand the "reserve" part, but I don't understand the "strategic."

  I'm open to the idea that this could be both a good idea and a way to line insiders' pockets with US taxpayer money, but it really just looks like the latter to me.

  (I've been able to come up with a few theories but they all involve the complete destruction of value of the US dollar, and I don't understand how that would be net good for America.)

• by sega_sai on 3/3/25, 12:18 AM

  While I completely agree crypto is full of shysters and most likely crypto has zero intrinsic value, as well the current administration tries to enrich itself through crypto, I disagree that recent change in prices after announcement proves it is a scam. Because if the government would have announced a strategic reserve in maple syrup, the syrup futures would have increased in price drastically as well.

• by tdeck on 3/3/25, 12:21 AM

  We are coming to the end of the era where you could avoid major exposure to crypto speculation by simply not "investing" in it. When the government and major banks and top S&P500 companies are putting their money in crypto, just imagine the damage the next bubble pop will inevitably cause.

• by jordanb on 3/3/25, 2:00 AM

  I'm assuming that next, the US will invest in a "Strategic Tesla stock reserve."

• by alsoforgotmypwd on 3/3/25, 3:05 AM

  I'm fine with crypto for transactions, but I'm not fine with my government using our money to pick winners and losers, conflicts of interest, emoluments, or artificially propping up what are likely bubbles and pyramid schemes.

• by lolc on 3/3/25, 5:37 PM

  Wow this is going to be epic! The US govt prints dollars to prop up cryptocoins!

  The sad thing is how this puts more money in the hands of bad people: This is inflating the holdings of shady orgs worldwide. And the way this admin has been bumbling its way into cleptocracy, I fully expect them to lose the keys later in a Mtgox scenario. Nobody will be able to explain how the funds were drained. They'd hired the best smart contract experts from the X roster, what more could they have done?

• by qgin on 3/3/25, 4:01 PM

  The United States government is now officially betting against the United States Dollar.

• by panarky on 3/3/25, 12:24 AM

  The fact that scammers, fraudsters, Ponzi schemers and extortion racketeers have run trillions of dollars of swindles using US dollars is not evidence that the US dollar is a scam, a fraud, a Ponzi scheme or an extortion racket.

• by neilv on 3/3/25, 12:45 AM

  Bigger picture, a genuine curious question:

  For the sake of argument, let's imagine a scenario in which, someday, a ridiculously, blatantly corrupt person became President. And Congress was aware, but had controlling majorities that, one way or another, were aligned with this situation. And the Supreme Court had already been started to be stacked by the same person. And various agencies under Executive branch, which might normally be able to push back, were being systematically gutted, and otherwise intimidated, including blatant reprisal against law enforcement officers for even investigating some past corruption case. And let's imagine that some oligarchs bought up a lot of Fourth Estate, and most of the rest of the Fourth Estate was decimated by other oligarch "disruptive tech", and tech oligarchs also control much of the remaining grassroots channels of communication. And lets imagine that, partly due to media manipulation by the oligarchs, the majority of the electorate, of all parties, had forgotten everything that they ever learned in Civics class.

  In this totally hypothetical situation-- but please bear with me, and imagine, for the sake of this fun intellectual exercise, that someday this could somehow happen in the US, in theory...

  What remaining US gov't checks and balances would there be? How could that corruption scenario be thwarted?

  (For example, is there a way for a minority in Congress to successfully bring charges? Does the FBI or some other agency have powers to investigate and intervene, below the radar? Does Judicial have any power to intervene, perhaps if petitioned? Do states have rights to contest the situation? What if there is also a treason angle; does that activate powers from anywhere else in the government to intervene?)

  If this scenario was discussed in Civics class, it flew right over my head at the time, but now seems interesting.

• by herodotus on 3/3/25, 12:18 AM

  Incredible conflict of interest here.

• by quantadev on 3/3/25, 12:27 AM

  If tax dollars are ever used to buy cryptos, that's simply a transfer of wealth to the crypto sellers, in exchange for nothing in return. This is just another "Tax and Waste" policy. It's just money taken from one group just to give to some other group. It's immoral and illegal, because the gov't is not an investment bank.

• by karp773 on 3/3/25, 1:01 AM

  Well, somebody has to HODL the bag at the end. Why not the taxpayers?

• by dpc_01234 on 3/3/25, 8:06 PM

  Notably, Bitcoiners are very upset about all the worthless shitcoins added to the BTC there.

  While the Ethereum is arguably decentralized, maybe, kind-of, the other ones: XRP, Solana, and Cardano, are basically centralized nonsense, that at best can be considered a payment system and not a decentralized commodity.

• by goosejuice on 3/3/25, 12:46 AM

  It's my understanding that the prevailing pro-crypto view is that it's a store of value not a payment system.

• by N_Lens on 3/3/25, 12:52 AM

  I hold crypto, mostly BTC, and think this is just another grabby move by the Trump administration that will ultimately harm crypto.

• by jxjnskkzxxhx on 3/4/25, 7:34 AM

  "bitcoin reserve" is the dumbest idea I've heard since "bitcoin".