A United States Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Is Finally Here!

Fair warning, this is a tweet-heavy edition. Sorry, but I just can’t help it this week!

This Week in Crypto

Before we cover the good stuff, let’s just peak at flows real quick. Another week of net outflows, but selling pressure has subsided (slightly).

And, onto the main piece of news for the week - it finally happened - President Trump signed an EO to establish an SBR. David Sachs in the video described the order as establishing a “digital Fort Knox” for “digital gold”.

Price initially tanked on the order to $84K, as it was revealed that the reserve will initially be funded with coins the federal government already owns (c.200,000 coins) and not funded with new coins purchased (yet). Since, we’ve stabilized around $88k, which isn’t too bad considering the poor equity performance.

A Bitcoin Strategic Reserve is no longer a theoretical idea - it’s now a policy conversation. This graphic outlines various ways the U.S. government could engage with Bitcoin, from hoarding seized assets to issuing Bitcoin-backed bonds. Notably, several options- like accepting BTC for fines and fees - could be implemented without congressional approval.

However, the juicy stuff like energy monetization, security contracts, and tax incentives, would require legislative buy-in. And at the far end of the spectrum, major financial moves like Bitcoin-backed bonds or swapping Treasuries for BTC would demand full congressional oversight.

• The wording in the EO is interesting. It says “the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers.” In other words, there seems to be a mechanism for Bessent and Lutnick to add additional coins to the reserve, provided it doesn’t come at a cost to taxpayers.

This clip from the Treasury Secretary contained two interesting sentances:

• He said “we’ll see what the way forward is for more acquisitions” and “we’re starting with Bitcoin, but it’s an overall crypto reserve”. Food for thought.

To sober you up a little, as I know this feels like a druken, narcotic fuelled fever dream, Nic Carter provides some (honestly convincing) and staunchly anti SBR thoughts in the clip below, it’s worth a watch:

To summarise, three questions now remain:

1. What does the schedule of acquisition of more Bitcoin look like, and would it require congressional approval?

2. What other coins may enter the reserve?

3. What other nation states will this prompt to start acquiring their own Bitcoin Reserves?

A couple other headlines which we found interesting:

I need this to be bullish for my heavy $COIN bags.

And we also did a podcast with Anchorage CEO Nathan, who will be attending the White House summit later today! Check it out on X:

This Week in TradFi

So much tariff news this week, we don’t even know where to start. But TLDR: President Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico then walked them back. 

• The tariffs are currently paused until April 2, and President Trump has said that the U.S. needs to reduce its trade deficit and has promised reciprocal tariffs on all nations starting in early April.

• Mexican officials are set to meet with U.S. trade officials next week to discuss the currently paused steel and aluminum tariffs. 

• Meanwhile, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is trying to work on a bilateral trade deal between the U.S. and India. Lutnick has asked India to bring down their high tariffs for the U.S. - India currently has some of the highest tariffs in the world.

Separately, on the domestic front:

• U.S. job growth picked up last month and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1% (vs 4% in January). Nonfarm payrolls increased by 151,000 jobs latest month, following 125,000 in January. 

• The inflation report comes out next week, which could rattle an already volatile stock market. The S&P 500 is on pace for its worst week in six months, and Nasdaq ended yesterday down more than 10% from its December all-time high. 

• The dollar also took a dip, down about 5% since Inauguration and at a four-month low. Investors have cut net long dollar positions to $15.3B, down form a nine-year high of $35.2B.

On the international front:

• Taiwan’s exports rose more than expected last month, as demand for AI grew with buyers trying to get ahead of potentially impending tariffs. Exports rose a whopping 31.5% YoY to $41.3B.

• China’s gold reserves continue to rise, now up to 73.6M fine troy ounces at the end of the month - marking four straight months of increases. This comes after President Trump implemented severe tariffs on Chinese goods, with an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imported goods added on earlier this week.

This Week in Tech

A bit of a slower week in tech this week (probably good after all that TradFi reading), but there are some fun new startups making waves:

• Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian have acquired Digg, one of the internet’s earliest news regulators. Kevin Rose is the original founder of Digg, and Ohanian - as you probably already know - was a cofounder at Reddit. Digg and Reddit used to be big rivals in the social news space, but Reddit has had much better staying power since then. Rose and Ohanian plan on reviving the platform with a “fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be”. 

• Google cofounder Larry Page is building a new company called Dynatomics. The company will be focused on applying AI to product manufacturing. According to The Information, Page has reported been working with a small group of engineers on AI that can create “highly optimized” designs for objects and then have a factory build them. Chris Anderson, former CTO of electric airplane startup Kittyhawk, is also involved in the efforts. 

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• Turing, a code contributor to AI projects, has raised a $111M Series E round, doubling its valuation to $2.2B. 

• Our Next Energy’s former CEO is now back at the company, after leaving in 2023 when the startup struggled to raise a Series C.

• And, sadly, Skype is shutting down. Rip to one of the greats. 

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.