Bitcoin has traded sideways over the last 24 as people digest Donald Trump’s well-telegraphed bitcoin bombshell.
The bitcoin price has climbed almost 20% since Trump was revealed to be the headline speaker at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, with billionaire investor Mark Cuban issuing a “crazy” bitcoin price prediction.
Now, after Trump promised to create a “strategic national bitcoin reserve” and predicted bitcoin could eclipse gold’s $16 trillion market capitalization, U.S. senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has introduced a bill to direct the U.S. Treasury to purchase 1 million bitcoins worth almost $70 billion—while MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor has upped his huge bitcoin price prediction.
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Former U.S. president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said the bitcoin … [+]
“If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future, we’ll keep 100%,” Trump said during his Saturday speech at Bitcoin 2024. “This will serve, in effect, as the core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile.”
Wild rumors had swirled all week that Trump could announce he’d create a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve during the bitcoin conference, with analysts comparing it to both the U.S.’s gold and oil reserves.
The U.S. currently holds around 212,000 seized bitcoin, worth some $15 billion, compared to its $600 billion worth of gold reserves.
“Soon [bitcoin] will be surpassing the entire market cap of silver,” Trump said. “It’s not bad about gold. How about gold? Let’s go gold. One day it probably will overtake gold, but based on the way it’s going now, it could very well be a possibility.”
After Trump’s speech, pro-bitcoin and crypto Republican Wyoming senator Cynthia Lummis unveiled a bill that will direct the U.S. Treasury to purchase 1 million bitcoins, worth almost $70 billion, over a period of five years.
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The bitcoin price has surged back to its peak of around $70,000 per bitcoin this year, helped by … [+]
“We know from modeling the numbers and past experience with bitcoin, that it is capable of being an absolute game changer for the mess the United States has gotten itself into with its debt and its deficits,” Lummis told The Block in an interview ahead of the announcement.
“We have a strategic oil reserve. We hold gold. So the idea of a strategic reserve used specifically to reduce the debt solves so many problems that it almost seems inherently obvious, but it’s nevertheless a big step,” Lummis said.
This week, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk warned the U.S. dollar is heading for “destruction” and the spiraling $35 trillion debt pile could “bankrupt” the U.S.—something some analysts think could push the bitcoin price higher.
Ahead of Trump’s speech and Lummis introducing her bill, Michael Saylor, the founder of software company-turned bitcoin buyer MicroStrategy, predicted the bitcoin price could surge to $49 million per bitcoin by 2045—which would mean bitcoin’s total market capitalization would be almost $100 trillion.
“It could be a $3 million bear case, it could be a $49 million bull case,” Saylor said in comments reported by Cointelegraph. “Bitcoin is immortal, immutable, and immaterial […] and it is the solution to our economic dilemma.”