Trump weighs potential bitcoin reserve with crypto executives poised to meet in Washington: report

President Donald Trump could be prepping an executive order to create a bitcoin reserve, Bloomberg reports, ahead of an inaugural crypto summit in Washington on Friday.

Trump could also announce that the government will no longer sell crypto it seizes in criminal cases and use those to establish a stockpile, according to a report from Bloomberg on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Both actions may not happen or can be altered, but are being discussed, Bloomberg's sources said. Another possibility is working on the tax treatment of crypto, Bloomberg reported.

Several crypto executives are set to attend the crypto commit hosted by Trump in D.C. on Friday afternoon. Among those include Coinabse CEO Brian Armstrong, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi and Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek.

The Trump administration has taken a friendlier approach to crypto over the past several weeks compared to the previous Biden administration, with several statements made by the sitting president to ensure that the U.S. will be the "crypto capital." One of Trump's latest moves happened last weekend when he directed his crypto working group to "move forward" on a "crypto strategic reserve" that would include Cardano, XRP, Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Trump also previously issued an executive order in January directing the working group to "evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile." That working group consists of federal officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

"A bitcoin strategic reserve is something the President's interested in," Lutnick reportedly told The Pavlovic earlier this week. "He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you're going to see it executed on Friday. So bitcoin is one thing, and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently — positively, but differently."

Charles Gasparino, FOX business senior correspondent, said today the White House is looking to clarify its crypto reserve later on Thursday or Friday.

The words reserve versus stockpile have been used interchangeably over the past few months, but there are some key differences.

“From my understanding, a stockpile would mean that the government would hold onto the crypto they have accumulated from various cases whereas a reserve would ultimately be what the Treasury Department determines to purchase and hold," said Rebecca Rettig, chief legal officer at Jito Labs, in a prior interview with The Block.