US President Donald Trump’s creation of a cryptocurrency reserve shortly before headlining a White House summit on the popular digital asset will get global attention if the reserve grows big enough to affect trading or market prices, but China already has safeguards against any potential impact, analysts said.
The president will also speak at the first White House Crypto Summit, to be chaired by his crypto tsar David Sacks for an audience of CEOs and investors, at which more details about the reserve are expected to be revealed.
As of late Friday afternoon, the price of bitcoin had fallen about 5 per cent from an early-morning high on Thursday. The White House had just announced that its reserve will be capitalised with units of the cryptocurrency owned by the US Department of Treasury after being forfeited as part of criminal or civil proceedings.
“The US is the leading market for crypto assets (and) will get bigger,” said Winston Ma, an adjunct professor on the digital economy at New York University. He said a large enough cryptocurrency reserve could augment the US dollar’s status as a global currency for trade among third countries.
