"Your editorial "The Fool's Gold of a Crypto Reserve" (March 10) raises a number of arguments against President Trump's strategic crypto reserve, but the bulk of these critiques aren't unique to crypto. They apply to all alternative assets held by the Treasury. Having a strategic reserve of gold and euros also invites presidents to bypass Congress on spending.
The crux of the argument against a crypto reserve is that "gold has been used as a store of wealth for centuries," while "bitcoin has been around for all of 16 years." For those who focus on the short-term movements of bitcoin, this argument is persuasive in a month when bitcoin is down more than 10% and crypto hucksters abound.
There will, however, inevitably be a digital version of gold for the simple reason that there has been a persistent demand throughout history for an asset that isn't subject to political monetary policy.
Gold has served this function for millennia, but in our digital age the ability to hold and instantaneously transfer a fixed-supply, transnational asset can in some ways be better served by a digital asset.
It's ironic that those who critique gold as a "barbarous relic" (John Maynard Keynes) are usually the first to critique bitcoin as newfangled "rat poison" (Warren Buffett).
Any national asset reserve is susceptible to politicization, as President Biden powerfully demonstrated with his depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease gas prices in 2022. The architects of Mr. Trump's crypto reserve should design guardrails to prevent such politicization -- say, by establishing an objective standard for adding new assets to the reserve as well as a formula for buying and selling assets.
It's true we don't want presidents of both parties playing hedge-fund manager in chief. But selling bitcoin is as much an investment decision as buying them. Owning a small amount of bitcoin sends a message that the federal government is skeptical of a Federal Reserve that is all too willing to print and politicize the dollar.
Prof. Max Raskin
New York University" [1]
1. Revisiting Trump's Case for a Crypto Reserve. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 17 Mar 2025: A18.
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