US crypto reserve clarification coming? Wait til Friday.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly said a bitcoin strategic reserve could be “executed on Friday”

article-image

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick | Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Many in the US woke up Wednesday to bitcoin back above $90,000.

After Donald Trump mentioned five tokens in his Sunday post about a crypto reserve, prices soared. BTC included (despite confusion from some about why this wouldn’t be a BTC-only reserve).  

Bitcoin ascended to about $95,000 Sunday, but essentially lost all those gains Monday. It traded in the mid-80s for much of Tuesday. 

The early Wednesday surge wasn’t because Trump mentioned BTC in his address to Congress Tuesday night. He didn’t. 

Rather it came after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly said a bitcoin strategic reserve is “something the president’s interested in.” He added: “I think you’re going to see it executed on Friday.”

Lutnick, the ex-CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, previously noted that TradFi firms would go “headfirst” into bitcoin when the regulatory environment improves. 

Tokens outside of BTC could be treated “positively, but differently” than the largest crypto asset, he told The Pavlovic Today. I applaud the journalist who was able to chat with Lutnick about this. But I still take the comments with a grain of salt. 

It seems kind of noncommittal. Trump’s interested in it and Lutnick thinks it will happen. 

The best us onlookers can do is first see what the administration says at Friday’s crypto summit. Then go from there. 

Chief bitcoin bull Michael Saylor said he was invited to the event. CNBC asked him if he thought any assets not named bitcoin should be in a US crypto reserve?

His response: “I think if you’re looking out over the next 100 years trying to figure out how you capitalize a nation-state or a country, what you want is a digital commodity.”

That would be bitcoin. 

“But if you have a sovereign wealth fund, then I think it’s well within the rights of the leader of the nation to decide to put proprietary assets, securities, tokens and the like into it,” Saylor added.

Trump’s executive order gives the Working Group until late July to make policy recommendations, including about a “national digital asset stockpile.” So don’t expect to know everything on Friday.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday