Senator Lummis Confirms US Bitcoin Reserve Funding “Can Start Anytime”
Pro-crypto US Senator Cynthia Lummis has confirmed that the process to acquire funds for the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) could “start anytime” as regulatory red tape delays the fund’s creation.
In an X post, Lummis said that the regulative side of things is still a “slog.” She added, however, that “the acquisition of funds for an SBR can start anytime” thanks to crypto-friendly US President Donald Trump.
Trump Signed An Executive Order For The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Earlier This Year
Trump signed an executive order to create the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve earlier this year.
Seven months have since passed and the concrete formulation of the SBR is yet to be confirmed. More specifically, there have not yet been any clear details regarding how exactly capital for the SBR will be raised.
The official government fact sheet says that the SBR will initially be “capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury.”
According to data from BiTBo, the US government currently holds 198,012 BTC valued at around $24.56 billion at current prices. This BTC was seized through civil or criminal proceedings.
The fact sheet also states that any additional BTC may be acquired via budget-neutral avenues that “impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”
However, the lack of progress in the months since Trump signed the executive order has led to debates around the exact timeline of the SBR’s launch. Adding to uncertainty around the SBR’s launch timeline is the ongoing US government shutdown, which has also delayed the decisions around various altcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) products.
US Government Could Use Gold Paper Gains To Fund SBR
Lummis made her comments in response to a post from ProCap BTC Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Jeff Park, who shared a video of an interview between himself and Bitcoin bull Anthony Pompliano. The two discussed the potential SBR.
Park went on to hypothesize what would happen if the US government were to use its paper gains that it has achieved on its gold reserves, which he estimates is around $1 trillion, and invest them into Bitcoin for the SBR.
In the grand scheme of things, Park argues that investing the $1 trillion in paper gains would be a small risk considering the government’s $37.88 trillion in fiscal debt. However, he said that $1 trillion could be “impactful for the Bitcoin market.”
CoinMarketCap data shows that BTC’s fully diluted value (FDV) stands at around $2.6 trillion, while the entire crypto market has a valuation of more than $4.26 trillion.
Crypto market cap (Source: CoinMarketCap)
“And so if there’s a way to unlock the ability to build leverage on the paper gains of gold to take a call option on Bitcoin. There’s something incredible here that could happen,” Park said during the interview.
“If you own Bitcoin, and you assume that it’s going to go up by 12% a year, you’ll make a 30x in 30 years,” he said, adding, “It’s actually going to be able to cover most of the fiscal deficit hole that exists.”
“And if you think it’s actually going to go up by 40% per year, which is what the CAGR has been otherwise annualizing, it’s 10 years,” he said.
“So the idea of having a gold revaluation event that’s Bitcoin aligned, I think, is really the most interesting political and economic story.”
Lummis agreed, and said in her post that Park’s remarks are “a fabulous articulation of why the SBR and passing the BITCOIN Act makes so much sense.”
Pompliano Also Believes Government Bitcoin Purchases Are Coming Soon
Amid the debates around the US SBR’s launch and how it will be funded, Pompliano spoke to CNBC earlier this year. During his appearance, he said that the US government could start buying Bitcoin in the near future after initially funding the SBR with seized Bitcoin.
“The US government at some point is gonna announce that they are buying Bitcoin,” he said.
“Creating the initial kinda strategic reserve and sitting the Bitcoin we already had there was good. But that’s kinda not the main dish,” he added.
“The main dish is when they start buying, and I think that will happen at some point.”
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