Trump's Bitcoin Reserve Idea Expands to Include Altcoins SOL, XRP and HBAR

Solana's SOL, Ripple's XRP and Hedera's HBAR outperformed other major cryptocurrencies on Thursday, helped by a NYPost report that said Donald Trump was "receptive" to the idea of creating an "America-first strategic reserve" of tokens including SOL, XRP and USDC.

SOL rose over 8% to $217 after the report, while XRP continued this week's advance to hit $3.35, just shy of its 2018 record price, according to CoinGecko.

Solana's SOL rose over 8% to $217 after the report, while XRP continued this week's advance to hit $3.35, just shy of its 2018 record price, per data source CoinGecko.

HEdera's HBAR, which wasn't mentioned in the story, rallied more than 10% to its strongest price since early December.

The CoinDesk 20 Index rose 5% over the past 24 hours, outperforming bitcoin's 0.5% gain to just shy of $100,000.

Anticipation among crypto investors is building for Trump's inauguration next week, and the potential announcement of first-day executive orders focusing on the digital asset industry. Trump promised during the campaign to position the U.S. as a leader in the crypto space including creating a national stockpile of bitcoin.

Senator Cynthia Lummis also introduced the BITCOIN Act in July proposing to acquire 5% of bitcoin's supply, while some U.S. states are also exploring or have put forward legislation to create a reserve for the asset.

But some market observers expressed skepticism about the government buying cryptos other than bitcoin.

"This is a ridiculous idea and will never happen," Quinn Thompson, founder of hedge fund Lekker Capital, said in an X post.

"It's not the government's place to be making venture capital bets on altcoins," Thompson told CoinDesk. "This rumor of a strategic reserve for other, non-BTC coins is another example of where people are taking what otherwise is a bad idea and running with it as fact."

Anthony Georgiades, general partner of investment firm Innovating Capital, said while it's "extremely positive" to promote U.S.-based innovation, the potential "nationalization of digital assets" could weaken efforts to decentralize blockchain economies.

"As it stands today, there's truly only one token that is sufficiently and purely decentralized and that is bitcoin," he said in an interview on the CoinDesk Markets Daily show. "These other projects all have the foundational strengths and ability towards a path to that level of decentralized ethos. This nationalization of digital assets might potentially weaken those efforts over time."