By Suzanne McGee
(Reuters) – Senior officials of the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump said in a media briefing on Friday that they view bitcoin as deserving “special treatment” as the White House forges ahead with plans to create stockpiles of digital assets.
Trump signed an executive order on Thursday creating a strategic bitcoin reserve that the officials described as “a digital Fort Knox for digital gold.”
Fort Knox is the United States Bullion Depository, traditional home of a large part of the country’s gold reserves, which takes its name from the nearby U.S. Army installation.
The order also created a separate digital assets stockpile, to be governed under different rules. Such a move would address some of the concerns voiced by industry participants ahead of a White House crypto summit on Friday about the prospect of creating a single multi-coin strategic reserve.
“Bitcoin is special in our view,” said one of the senior administration officials. “It’s the original cryptocurrency. It’s the most secure; it’s never been hacked. It’s scarce; the bitcoin protocol limits the number (of coins) to 21 million. It’s the most decentralized.”
The executive order also allows Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “to develop budget-neutral strategies for adding to that reserve.”
Just as presidential administrations throughout history have treated gold as a strategic asset to be held indefinitely without worrying about price fluctuations, so the administration will not be concerned about short-term movements in the price of bitcoin, officials said.
The rules are different for the digital asset stockpile, which will hold positions in cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin acquired by the U.S. through any forfeiture proceedings. The Treasury may not purchase additional holdings for this stockpile.
“The principle there is responsible stewardship, and so the secretary of the Treasury has the discretion to make adjustments to that portfolio or adjust that portfolio, as long as it is budget neutral,” an administration official said.
A group of senior crypto industry leaders is scheduled to meet with Trump and other administration leaders, including David Sacks, the president’s crypto policy adviser, for a four-hour-long roundtable discussion starting at 1:30 PM ET on Friday at the White House.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; editing by Megan Davies and Nia Williams)
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