Let’s be real: This is a subsidy. The people who hate public spending have invented a massive government subsidy for a technology that has still yet to find a broad-based practical application 15 years after its debut
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Exceptionally risky. Like precious metals, the value of crypto-curriencies is based on supply and demand of the product. By $10 trillion in Bitcoin and it goes to $5 trillion in value and $5 trillion is added to the national debt. Ex. Ford and palladium, 2001
Let’s also be real - this is not a new phenomenon, that’s ALWAYS been the “conservative” position on spending! The ONLY time they give a shit about the national debt is when a Dem is in the WH.
if after 15 years it has no use, maybe it is useless Ponzie scheme for geeks with too big wallet ? it has no use at all for 99,8% of people. And price ? Pure scam
Creating fake currency, with no regulation, only to turn around and look to the government (taxpayers) to cover the losses when it all collapses is the grandest scam ever, and the architects of the scam are setting it up in plain sight.
“Mabel, listen, I know you are relying on SS to live but these bros over here need another McClaren and that can only happen if we divert money to create this new bitcoin reserve, you understand right?”
Just because Trump appoints a bureaucrat, doesn't mean that the government gets control over Bitcoin. You will never need the permission of a bank to use BTC, and the Fed doesn't get to print more of it whenever they want like they will with dollars.
But if they have a strategic reserve of it, they could certainly use that to manipulate the value by either adding to the reserve or releasing some of it.
I’m opposing crypto on a principle basis. Crypto, unlike other currencies has no backing but collective greed.
Creating a federal fund, aka making US government back crypto is like sending in your lottery tickets with the demand to put a fair price to the numbers. It would be state financed fraud.
It actually does have a broad-based practical application: to launder assets and secretly transfer money to people for any illicit purpose, making it both a fungible and non-fungible asset class. That's why it was great for drug dealers when it first gained momentum. Probably still is?
If they're looking to use this as exit liquidity, then it's great for them. If they're true believer buy and hodl types, you'd think they might stop to consider what might happen if a future administration decides to liquidate.
Of all the schemes I've ever heard, @brianfung.me, this is one of those that doesn't pass the initial smell test. If the U.S. Government buys BTC it will double in price, making a lot of BTC holders wealthy.
I suspect it’s more than just that. Canada now has a bunch of regulations, and one of the main things I notice about them is how effective they are at causing the additional fees and small but significant exchange costs that are a feature of trad’l banks and stock traders.
Boy, wait until it collapses. They're going to trot out SO MANY blue-collar minority men and claim they represent the "average" Bitcoin investor. Then they'll demand that the Federal Reserve bail out this unregulated casino for the super-wealthy. And it will probably work because bribery.
I’m starting to wonder if this is the future of generative AI as well. No real practical application, so tech companies will be looking for government bailouts.
It’s confounding to me that the people that wanted an extra-governmental currency with none of the regulations want to tie it into the federal government.
It’s only a matter of time before trump calls for having all payments from the Federal Government such as Social Security checks or tax refunds made in cryptocurrency, with preference given to his own cryptocurrency, of course.😏
There's also this garbage. Here in Texas we have such a fragile power grid that we literally have to pay MILLIONS of dollars to crypto miners to curtail power use during critical events like heatwaves and snowstorms.
Do homeowners get paid to NOT use power? HELL NO. Crony capitalism in full effect.
It's worse than that. When a government advances the crypto business, many industries benefit. Here in Texas, crypto is a MAJOR consumer of electrical power. Farms are major consumers of hardware from companies like Nvidia. LOTS of pockets to be lined here.
It's a lot similar to a reserve of gold, which the US does have.
It's a stupid decision for the US anyway, because it detracts from the power of the dollar.
But a great idea for all other countries.
It's great for the US in the long run because it removes our power to use the Dollar as a weapon of imperialism; I -- for one -- am sick of being world-police.
Also, the effort to destabilize the dollar and it's place as the world's reserve currency makes it impossible not to wonder if they're ALL Russian assets working for Putin
All for this, as long as the BTC are bought with new "MAGACoins" or Trump NFTs some other useless junk, and not USD. Because, let's face it, who wants fiat currency? Right? Right?
I was making the point that nbc data is misleading. This shows 25 of the top 40 wallets either belong to an exchange or government (seized btc). Not even sure if satoshi’s wallets, are among this, but he has the most and those can be considered lost
Tbh, I agree with you that calling crypto a ‘currency’ is a bit stupid. Because crypto is first and foremost a new tech which can have characteristics of a currency, a commodity and/or a stock, but is neither of them. It’s something on its own. Not talking memecoins here, they’re stupid and nothing
It’s used for remittances worldwide. Romania just used it to secure election results, just like El Salvador before. Millions use it for banking. Buenos Aires uses it for ID-verification giving people greater privacy. Black rock is issuing bonds on it, etc, etc.
Bitcoin is an asset & open source tech (that secures the asset) which has gained significant adoption as (a) store of value & (b) means of exchange across multiple, distinct, user groups. eg, in 2024 BTC spot ETFs gathered 60B+ AUM from investors, making BTC a top performing ETF category.
@brianfung.me The version that 45 has expressed support for is just holding onto seized criminal bitcoin rather than selling it.
The problem with that (other than the obvious one that bitcoin, as a long term pyramid scheme, isn't actually a great investment) is that the government isn't […]
Since right wing extremists are the most vigorous and proactive scammees in existence, it's only natural that shallow grifts like this would pop up like a mushroom forest.
Did they beat them? Or did they influence them? We had multiple bomb-threats in swing states that shut down blue county polling stations for a while and oddities in bullet ballots. A LOT of smoke coming from this election and Polymarket is just another to add to the list.
Yes they clearly beat then, no they didn't influence them because people don't vote on that basis and even if they did they would have been much more influenced by the much more prevalent mainstream polls
People see a poll and might question if their thought system. People bet on a poll and actively work to influence it to make money. We've seen it time and again throughout history and is why gambling in sports was illegal for so long. Why would it be any different with elections?
"subsidy" is too generous. Crypto bet on Trump to win, and placed a lot of money on that horse. The horse won, and so now Trump and his gang will simply print money and hand it over to bitcoiners getting nothing of value in return.
As a #homeless person who - thanks to BC Libs's early 2K govt cuts - was left to his own means to recover ID stolen in 2004 - Bitcoin was very useful. Tween 2016 & 2023 (when I finally recovered my BC ID & got new bank account) BTC was invaluable. Yes I'm geeky but crypto's no flakier than fiat.
It looks like he’s going to replace the US dollar with his crypto currency. Everyone will lose their money. We won’t be able to buy or sell anything without his name on it
It’s not just a subsidy, it’s also an insurance policy.
They’re trying to get the US government into a situation where it has skin in the game making regulation and enforcement against BTC literally lose the government money.
It's fully traceable. Every bit of movement of any asset is public and auditable by everyone who is willing to do so. I'm not advocating to put the U.S. Treasury on Bitcoin, but saying "without a trace" is inaccurate
The trumpies really are all about using the federal coffers (our tax dollars) for their own monetary gain. They have no policies with any integrity, hypocrisy is rampant and they just want to be the only ones feeding at the trough while our country crumbles around them.
There are. And at this point there are also probably some dead guys who didn’t bequeath access to their wallets to any heirs whose holdings are therefore permanently off the market and distorting the value of everything
Not just people who died, i have bitcoin on an old hard drive and laptop that died a very long time ago. Even if I could retrieve them, I don't have the passkey anymore so wouldn't be able to access it. I'm sure there's a lot like this from the beginning.
Wasn't the crypto appeal that it's free from government intervention? Why should the government come in now to boost it? In the interest of which party?
I'd argue its worse than a subsidy, it's a government run money laundering machine that explicitly favors the handful of entities that control the Bitcoin "market"
The only practical application was anonymizing all of my illegal behavior, but I keep discovering that my Bitcoin behavior is far from anonymous, making it generally useless.
Worse than a subsidy, it's just using public money to backstop gambling by meme bros who in turn are enabling money launderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, oligarchs stashing cross border wealth, and a host of other illicit activity.
Subsidy is an interesting angle. Would you prefer gold or do you think the government can continue operating as is?
Other countries are shifting away from using the USD as a reserve currency
There’s a lot of grift and stupidity in crypto, but the reason every major jurisdiction in the world, except the US until now, has crafted regulation is not because every one except the US anti-crypto democrats are dumb.
I disagree, this is straight up theft. This institution will buy crypto to maintain its price, and print new money to do so. This will benefit 47 directly as he is invested in crypto.
So the people who pitched Bitcoin as a way to beat the government spying on them….
Want the Government to regulate that?
Sounds about right.
#rocketscience
It's not the same people. It's fiat brains wanting to just use Bitcoin to make more fiat.
They think that is valuable for them. They are in for a shock.
Well just so you know; people who have millions of dollars invested in a thing, generally want assurances from their government that they won't get that thing taken away from them.
It isn’t a subsidy, it is an outright theft from the treasury to support the crypto scam. Subsidies are tied to productive work or policy, this is just giving crypto bros their dues
Crapto outgrew its optimal usefulness when it moved away from its roots in black market drugs, guns, and child porn. Now, its just another legitimized means for washing money, like NeFTs.
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https://www.just-auto.com/news/usa-ford-cuts-palladium-stocks/
What's considered trashy if you're poor, 🗑
but classy if you're rich? 💎
Getting money from the government! 💵
We don't need to make this out to be more complicated than it is.
Doesn't this idea defeat the whole purpose?
Short term volatility doesn't change the long term price because there is a fixed supply.
Creating a federal fund, aka making US government back crypto is like sending in your lottery tickets with the demand to put a fair price to the numbers. It would be state financed fraud.
Hey Donald we supported you. Give us a ton of cash
https://bsky.app/profile/brianfung.me/post/3lbxgbz6zl227
Subsidy? Self enrichment? Both?
There's also ransoms, and scams of various stripes.
Money is money. It’s either backed by the authority of government, or it’s not.
1) money laundering
2) buying cocaine
They're not *good* applications, mind you, but they exist.
(Note: I'm being snarky. I fully agree, and go farther in saying that crypto is a fucking waste of resources and a blight upon the world)
"Give me your gold and I'll give you crypto. It's a good deal for the country, trust me bro"
It's a pump and dump
Do homeowners get paid to NOT use power? HELL NO. Crony capitalism in full effect.
It's a stupid decision for the US anyway, because it detracts from the power of the dollar.
But a great idea for all other countries.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/18/trump-crypto-meme-coin-inauguration-00199157
?
And at much larger scale. Also as a % of total volume/market.
Current admin even acknowledges that.
So it’s either a disingenuous argument to make or based in lack of knowledge.
Not saying there’s people that have a lot of it, but the data used is plain wrong. And outdated
https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
The record shows that Crypto markets are concentrated and manipulated.
Calling crypto ‘currency’ when it’s rarely used as one, is a laugh.
Besides ransoms, as another pointed out, I forgot crypto is good for tax evasion
Besides, blockchain is transparent and authorities are quite good in tracking down who owns a wallet if they want to.
Also a reason why criminals don’t like it that much
Plenty of proven use cases
Bitcoin is an asset & open source tech (that secures the asset) which has gained significant adoption as (a) store of value & (b) means of exchange across multiple, distinct, user groups. eg, in 2024 BTC spot ETFs gathered 60B+ AUM from investors, making BTC a top performing ETF category.
You can socialise the losses and privatise the profits without any pesky regulations. The grift is the point, always has been.
The problem with that (other than the obvious one that bitcoin, as a long term pyramid scheme, isn't actually a great investment) is that the government isn't […]
It's theft.
https://www.investopedia.com/tech/what-happens-bitcoin-after-21-million-mined/
And Trump is dumb enough to fall for it.
They’re trying to get the US government into a situation where it has skin in the game making regulation and enforcement against BTC literally lose the government money.
https://youtu.be/YT8RXgFDbA4?si=c9RFbCGD3f07__wg
Yeah, that's tinfoil-hatty, but at the same time it's not.
Still, when I see stuff like this, combined with Trump, Musk and Putin’s track records, it sounds like a terrible idea.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/south-african-brothers-billions-bitcoin-disapper-crypto-heist-2021-6-1030548585
Will writers aren't really up to speed on this, still.
Other countries are shifting away from using the USD as a reserve currency
https://micah-warren.ghost.io/on-bitcoin-as-a-reserve-asset/
A Reserve to be created?
Seems like there's an intent here to redo the early 1930s.
Want the Government to regulate that?
Sounds about right.
#rocketscience
They think that is valuable for them. They are in for a shock.
Essentially a ponzy scheme selling stardust or pet rocks without the solid mineral comfort.
Safe and sound 🍁
But I fail to see what government has to do with securing their imaginary currency.
Go watch the news or something, you're clueless.