President Trump followed through on a popular campaign promise this month. After laying the groundwork for a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency holdings in earlier commitments, the March 6 signing of Executive Order 14233 seeks to establish an official Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile.

Many crypto investors had been hoping for a truly game-changing strategic reserve, paving the way to massive federal purchases of Bitcoin (BTC 0.68%) and other digital assets. The executive order didn’t exactly deliver on those bullish hopes, and the immediate market reaction was largely negative. On the other hand, this two-pronged digital asset strategy may turn out to have some value-boosting power after all.

Here are three important details about Executive Order 14233 that probably didn’t jump out at you from reading the headlines — and perhaps not even after taking a quick look at the order. Bitcoin investors should pay more attention than others, but it’s also substantial news to Ethereum (ETH 0.92%) and XRP (XRP 0.37%) holders.

1. Private investments dwarf strategic reserves

The idea of mirroring the U.S. gold reserve in Bitcoin (and perhaps other digital assets) sounds like a big deal. However, the gold holdings in Fort Knox and elsewhere are not that large. According to the Treasury’s own data, the total value of all gold under federal ownership was about $11 billion in February.

To put that gold figure into context, there are currently three Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with more than $11 billion of Bitcoin in each portfolio:

Data collected from Finviz.com on March 21, 2025.

Gold reserves would be larger if the American dollar were directly based on the value of its gold holdings, but that’s not how the dollar works anymore. The country started to cut loose from the gold standard in 1933, completing the journey to a fiat currency in 1973. Since then, the dollar hasn’t been tied to any physical assets, becoming a fiat currency with more direct government control over its effective value.

So, the gold reserve has nothing to do with the value of American dollars. It’s also a pretty small portion of the global gold reserve, currently worth about $20 trillion, according to several sources. ETFs already manage 5.5% of the cryptocurrency’s market value, making $11 billion a drop in the golden ocean.

In other words, it may be misguided to expect a price-changing impact from any version of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. These reserves aren’t that huge. The private investments flowing through ETFs seem to have stronger price-moving effects on Bitcoin than any government effort ever could.

2. The Digital Asset Stockpile is very different from the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

Cryptocurrencies not named Bitcoin are in the domain of the distinct Digital Asset Stockpile. This portfolio is tasked to collect the non-Bitcoin crypto coins currently held by any part of the Treasury, adding more only as the result of legal proceedings. To be clear, the Treasury will manage its altcoins in one central portfolio but will not actively buy any more Ethereum, Litecoin (LTC 0.83%), XRP, Solana, or stablecoins. Any additions to this Stockpile will come from criminal or civil court cases.

Solana and XRP investors were expecting a more active purchasing program, and their coin prices drooped sharply as soon as Trump signed the executive order.

XRP Price data by YCharts.

3. “Budget-neutral” Bitcoin purchases can be larger than you think

I don’t have any bullish insights to share about the Digital Asset Stockpile, but the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve might have some price-boosting power in the end. If Bitcoin continues to rise in value over the long term, the Treasury could reallocate many forms of monetary holdings to this newfangled asset class.

• Selling off some gold is one option, though I already talked about the limited scale of that resource.
• The Treasury also has about $24.1 billion of euros and euro-denominated securities, along with $13.7 billion in similar assets measured in Japanese yen. Together, that’s approximately $36.8 billion of foreign currency reserves that could be moved into the Bitcoin bucket.
• It also manages $27.2 billion of reserves in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), not to mention a staggering $170.7 billion of special drawing rights (SDRs) against the IMF’s basket of major international currencies. These money baskets are similar to savings accounts on the scale of global finance.

You’ve heard of other asset reserves, but those are often outside the Treasury Department’s control and, therefore, not a serious part of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve discussion.

The Department of Energy had about 396 million barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on March 14. That’s worth about $27 billion at recent oil prices, but it’s not a Treasury-owned asset. Likewise, fabled 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese in long-term cold cave storage could be worth $7.8 billion on the open market.

Flooding the market with massive amounts of extra oil or literal government cheese would drive prices way down, but you get my drift. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) owns the cheese caves, and the USDA is not mentioned in Executive Order 14233. And pulling huge portions of America’s monetary reserves out of the IMF could result in a global economic crisis, even if the Treasury is moving the funds into a promising new asset class like Bitcoin.

So, any Bitcoin-buying program on a market-moving scale would have to be done with great care over a long period, and I don’t expect any massive overnight price jumps. But there is some potential for a price-boosting slow burn here — even if dipping into the national oil and cheese reserves isn’t an option.