By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to promote United States leadership in digital assets and financial technology while protecting economic liberty, it is hereby ordered as follows:
The Bitcoiners are PISSED!
(i) protecting and promoting the ability of individual citizens and private-sector entities alike to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution, including the ability to develop and deploy software, to participate in mining and validating, to transact with other persons without unlawful censorship, and to maintain self-custody of digital assets;
Sounds good to me... what's the problem?
The gubment is promising to provide regulatory clarity and stop the regulation-by-enforcement strategy that we've seen in the past. It's crazy to see how this administration has hit the ground running... potentially faster than any other in history.
Except to the extent required by law, any ongoing plans or initiatives at any agency related to the creation of a CBDC within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be immediately terminated, and no further actions may be taken to develop or implement such plans or initiatives.
CBDCs are also banned it seems.
Not that they were ever a threat to begin with, but that's another argument entirely.
So why they mad?
Oh no Trump is buying shitcoins!
It's especially hilarious that World Liberty Financial doesn't hold any Bitcoin whatsoever. They have wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum but that's not real Bitcoin, as we should all well know by now: trusting some smart contract or centralized clearinghouse on another chain is not acceptable... especially for a government agency creating a tactical reserve.
Bitcoiners Slam Ripple For Pushing Multi-Asset Reserve
Brad Garlinghouse has moved in for the kill, using his connections and whispering his lies.
Riot Platforms Head of Research Pierre Rochard said that Ripple is the biggest obstacle to the creation of a Bitcoin Reserve and is trying to derail it by throwing money at politicians.
Ripple CEO Brad Garinghouse responded to the post, saying that Ripple’s efforts were accelerating the likelihood of a strategic crypto reserve happening.
So of course now Bitcoiners are coming forward and saying the USG should either have a Bitcoin-only reserve or nothing, as if they have the power to dictate such terms. The overconfidence in this regard is laughable, but it's fun to watch them squirm.
Many maximalists have even gone so far as to say that even non-maximalsts agree with them... in that it's not appropriate for the government to own anything other than BTC at this point. As much as I would love to disagree with this brazen sentiment... I don't. Bitcoin has the best risk:reward and lowest volatility. A win for Bitcoin is a win for everyone. It does indeed make a lot of sense that, especially in these early days, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve would not include anything else.
Here's something I didn't know.
I found out yesterday that the XRP blockchain has over 30000 blocks missing (the first week or two)... as in all the blocks that printed XRP out of thin air and were distributed to whoever Ripple wanted to distribute them to. So rather than a normal genesis block starting at 0 it starts at something at 32000, making audits of the chain somewhat dubious and shady... as if XRP wasn't shady enough.
So XRP is lobbying hard to get the government to buy their shitcoin that they printed out of nothing and gave to themselves and their crony friends. Let's be real they'll probably get what they want if the people who currently own XRP are powerful enough to get what they want.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... XRP has 100B tokens, and the community isn't going to let them print more. Many are saying that adopting XRP is the same as adopting a CBDC... it's not. Although Ripple itself seems to embrace the idea of CBDC so that's not a good sign on that front. Clearly the optics and philosophy here are shooting up red flags regardless of any silver linings in place.
https://x.com/mandalorianHODL/status/1882834845539381467
I'm taking my ball and going home!
The problem is that maximalists never had the ball in the first place. They got their Ross Ulbricht pardon and their promise of a Bitcoin Reserve and thought they were running the show. They are not. The government will do whatever it wants. They can whine all they want about it. Maximalists are a small and annoyingly loud minority of this space.