Former US President and current Republican presidential nominee Trump has pledged to make America the "crypto capital of the planet" and create a bitcoin (BTC) "strategic reserve" using the currency that the government currently holds.
The current US authorities also holds other cryptocurrencies such as 50,000 Ether (ETH) worth $166.7 million as well as major stablecoins like 121 million USDC worth $121.7 million, and 40,000 BNB valued at $23.2 million.
Additionally, the government is in possession of 750,000 WBTC worth $50.3 million, 19 million AUSDC worth $18.8 million and 13 million BUSD valued at $13.6 million, Arkham data showed.
For comparison, the value of the government’s BTC holdings stood at about $5 billion last year, the Wall Street Journal earlier reported, adding that a significant part of this digital currency came from confiscations related to darkweb markets like Silk Road.
Trump has meanwhile made it clear during a recent speech at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee that he wanted cryptocurrency “mined, minted and made” in the US. He also sought to contrast his support of cryptocurrency to the Biden’s administration efforts to regulate the industry, telling the crowd that the federal government was “blocking your way.”
According to Trump, "They took it away from you. So, as I take steps to transform that vast wealth into a permanent national asset to benefit all Americans, today I repeat my promise to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht," the founder of the Silk Road website. The man was sentenced to life in prison after a judge held him responsible for six overdose deaths linked to his website.