Crypto investors had many questions when Donald Trump announced the creation of the strategic crypto reserve.
Surely, the key question was whether the U.S. was ready to buy cryptocurrencies at the open market, a move that could have triggered a huge rally in crypto. There was another interesting question — how did all those coins get into the list?
Before the details of the crypto reserve plan were revealed, most industry observers believed that the U.S. would create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. The decentralized Bitcoin, which is not controlled by any single party and is often viewed as the 21st century gold, looked like a logical addition to U.S. reserves.
Some “aggressive” investors could have foreseen that the second crypto by market cap, ETH, could also find a place in U.S. crypto reserves. However, almost no one expected that smaller coins like XRP, SOL, and ADA would be included into the list.
Sure, the Trump administration made a distinction between Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile, but the industry was still puzzled by the decision to include lesser-known coins.
Recently, an article by POLITICO, which specializes in political insights, shed some light on how XRP found its way into the draft version of the U.S. strategic crypto reserve. According to POLITICO, lobbyist Brian Ballard played a key role, pushing XRP into Trump’s initial post about the strategic reserve. Ripple Labs, which issues XRP, was a Ballard client.
There’s little secret that many publications made on behalf of politicians are not written by them. Unstead, politicians usually approve the release of the pre-agreed text. According to the article, Trump realized that Ripple was Ballard’s client after his initial post on the strategic reserve was published. POLITICO claims that Trump was furious about this issue and that Ballard has become persona non grata.
It should be noted that not all insider information in such publications turns out to be correct. The information could be incomplete, inaccurate, or an outright lie, fed by sophisticated lobbyists to info-hungry journalists.
That said, such publications show that the strategic crypto reserve may face significant opposition during its creation. Trump’s political opponents will surely highlight the issue of a lobbied coin in the U.S. digital asset stockpile, whether it is true or not. In addition, XRP enjoyed a major rally before it was included into Trump’s post, which may also raise questions among U.S. legislations.
In this light, the Trump administration may be extremely careful with second-tier coins when building the strategic crypto reserve, avoiding potential attacks from political opponents. Most likely, the U.S. will limit itself to stockpiling confiscated coins and will not even think about buying any second-tier coin at the open market for the foreseeable future.