Bitcoin prices fell over 5% on Friday after White House crypto czar David Sacks indicated that the US government wouldn’t use taxpayer money to fund a strategic stockpile of the largest digital asset ordered by President Donald Trump.
Bitcoin price dropped as much as 4.63% to $87,925 as of 10:35 AM. Prices of other smaller digital tokens including Ethereum, XRP, Cardano and Solana also dropped up to 5%.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve, a day before meeting with executives from the cryptocurrency industry at the White House.
The reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, billionaire David Sacks, said in a post on social media platform X.
Trump had announced the names of five digital assets he expects to include in this reserve, spiking the market value of each. The five are bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and cardano, the president said.
The US currently owns about $16.4 billion worth of Bitcoin and about $400 million worth of seven other tokens, largely attributable to asset forfeitures related to civil and criminal cases, Bloomberg reported.
“The US will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the Reserve. It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called digital gold,” Sacks said.
The executive order additionally authorizes the secretaries of the Treasury and of the Commerce Department to develop “budget-neutral strategies” for acquiring additional Bitcoin, provided there is no incremental cost to American taxpayers, he said.
Gold prices traded lower on Friday on some profit-taking, but was on track for a weekly rise amid uncertainty around US tariff plans firmed demand.
Spot gold eased 0.2% to $2,904.98 an ounce. Bullion has gained 1.6% so far this week. US gold futures lost 0.5% to $2,911.90.
Meanwhile, the US dollar index was hovering near a four-month low.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
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