‘We’re not there yet’: Why Trump’s strategic bitcoin reserve plan remains a long shot
As President Trump prepares to lay out his strategy this week for establishing a U.S. strategic crypto reserve, one of its primary supporters doubts he has the Congressional support to make it happen.
Trump will detail his plans for the reserve this Friday at the White House’s inaugural Crypto Summit, which will be attended by key crypto industry leaders, such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Strategy founder Michael Saylor.
But even though Republicans in Congress have been unwavering in their support of Trump so far, Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who introduced the bill to create the crypto reserve, does not think the support will extend to this latest initiative.
“It was hard for me to hear that my colleagues, even on my side of the aisle, were not ready,” she said at the Bitcoin Investor Day event in New York City on Friday.
Lummis’ home state of Wyoming is one of the most crypto-friendly states in the U.S. and also a Republican stronghold. But a Wyoming House committee in February rejected a bill that would’ve given the state treasurer a green light to invest about half a billion dollars in bitcoin.
In other words, even Republicans in a crypto-friendly state aren’t on board with investing government money in crypto.
While Trump has bypassed Congress through the use of executive orders on numerous legislative actions he’s been enforcing, it won’t work in this case. He will need a majority in Congress to approve the strategic crypto reserve.
According to Lummis, she’s been told by Republican Rep. Tim Scott, chairman of the House Banking Committee, that "we might need to put a pin for a little while in the bitcoin strategic reserve because we're not there yet,” she said at the event in New York.
‘It’s unbelievable to me there are arguments’
Trump’s plan to establish the reserve has generated fierce debate about its efficacy among people both inside and outside the crypto industry.
Cathie Wood, founder of Ark Invest, and one of the earliest proponents of bitcoin, said during an appearance on the CBOE Global Markets 2025 Bitcoin Outlook webinar in February that she supports the reserve and questioned why there are some bitcoin maximalists who are against it.
“It’s unbelievable to me there are arguments among the bitcoin [maximalists] that this should not happen,” she said. “I think the surprise here is that the U.S., given all the regulatory morass that we’ve been in, that we’re the first ones coming out flying in this regard.”
But when Trump indicated in a post on Truth Social on Sunday that he wanted to include other digital assets in the crypto reserve such as ether, XRP, SOL and ADA in addition to bitcoin, even some of his most vocal supporters balked.
“Taxation is theft,” Joe Lonsdale, founder of venture firm 8VC and a Trump supporter, wrote in a post on X. “It should be kept to a minimum. It’s wrong to steal my money for grift on the left; it’s also wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes.”
Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong wasn’t as dismissive of Trump’s plan as Lonsdale, but he indicated in his own post on X that it should be a strategic bitcoin reserve, rather than a crypto reserve.
“Just bitcoin would probably be the best option - simplest, and clear story as successor to gold,” Armstrong wrote.