According to Arkham Research, the US government holds approximately 378,372 bitcoins worth more than $24 billion. More than a year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, no new Bitcoin has been purchased.
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The government has not gone beyond the digital assets it already had from criminal seizures. David Bailey, a former crypto adviser to the Trump administration, says the gap tells the whole story.
Not enough to like: Bailey
“It’s not enough to love Bitcoin,” Bailey said at the Bitcoin Investor Week conference in New York last week. He was forthright about what he sees as the difference between political goodness and real action.
His take: Trump’s support for Bitcoin was real, but support alone won’t move markets or politics.
Spending political capital is the hard part
Bailey said the administration has taken an important first step. But the first steps, he said, do not automatically lead to the second steps.
Without preparedness for resistance—from fiscal constituencies, from skeptical lawmakers, from a political system that doesn’t readily embrace new fiscal ideas—the reserve order remains largely symbolic.
Reports say that the White House’s own AI and crypto coordinator, David Sachs, recognized the problem early on.
Just two months after signing the executive order, Sachs said the addition to the government’s bitcoin holdings would require a “budget neutral” approach, meaning no new taxes or new debt.
This limitation is difficult to work with. No framework has been revealed on how to meet it.
Bailey did not shy away from harsh language. “If you’re not willing to commit the political capital to mobilize the various levers necessary to move the ball forward,” he said, the result is the same whether the politician likes Bitcoin or not.
He called the difference between expressing an opinion and doing something that supports it.
Bailey says Bitcoin wins both ways
Despite the criticism, Bailey refused to be pessimistic. He told the conference audience that Bitcoin does not need government action to survive or grow. The question, as he formulated it, is only a matter of time.
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“Four years from now, whether it’s 10 years from now or 20 years from now,” he said, “we’re going to get to a point where we actually have a government that’s favorable to the regulations that Bitcoin needs to succeed.”
Bailey now runs KindlyMD, a Bitcoin brokerage firm, and he’s made it clear he’s focused on expanding the property rather than waiting for Washington.
More Bitcoin owners means more voters with a personal stake in pro-Bitcoin politics — and that, he says, makes adoption inevitable over time.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView
