U.S. Army commander names Bitcoin among ‘instruments of power’
April 21, 2026
A senior United States military commander has broken ranks with conventional Pentagon scepticism on cryptocurrency.
In a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing on April 21, Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), endorsed Bitcoin’s potential for national power.
Related: Will bitcoin miners play a role in the future of national defense?
The backdrop to Paparo’s testimony is an intensifying strategic rivalry with China.
Beijing sits on a formidable crypto stockpile. According to some estimates, the country might have at least 194,000 BTC in government hands. Much of it traces back to the PlusToken Ponzi scheme bust of 2019, one of the largest crypto fraud cases in history.
That single operation netted authorities nearly 195,000 BTC, over 833,000 ETH, and billions of units across a dozen other digital assets, including XRP, Dogecoin, and Litecoin.
However, none of it has been officially designated a strategic reserve and Beijing has never publicly disclosed its digital asset holdings.
But the concept of a strategic Bitcoin reserve has been gaining traction in Washington.
President Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, seeding it with BTC seized through criminal and civil asset forfeiture.
The White House has directed that government holdings not be sold, treating them as long-term reserve assets that crypto policy advisor David Sacks described as “a digital Fort Knox.”
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Appearing before the Senate committee, Paparo was pressed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville on the role of Bitcoin in America’s competition with China.
Tuberville has co-sponsored the BITCOIN Act alongside Sen. Cynthia Lummis, which would go further by directing the Treasury to acquire one million BTC over time
Paparo explained that based on INDOPACOM’s research, Bitcoin shows “incredible potential as a computer science tool.
“Bitcoin is a reality. It’s a valuable computer science tool as a power projection…It has got really important computer science application for cybersecurity,” Paparo said.
He went further, describing Bitcoin’s underlying computer science architecture, the fusion of cryptography, blockchain, and proof-of-work protocols, and stating that those protocols “impose more cost than just securing networks,” with applications extending to offensive and defensive cyber operations.
When asked about his recommendations to Congress for leading in the Bitcoin competition, Paparo said,
“It’s a peer-to-peer, zero-trust transfer of value. Anything that supports all instruments of national power for the United States of America is to the good.”
This is a striking reversal from his own past warnings about the technology.
Just two years ago, Paparo told a separate Senate hearing that “cryptocurrency inherently, with its opaqueness, is a key enabler worldwide for proliferation, for terror, for illicit trafficking.”
He had also flagged crypto’s appeal to North Korea and illicit arms dealers who could make “money outside of the eyes of the law.”
None of that scepticism appeared in his latest remarks.
Related: How North Korea has funded its regime with $3.4 billion in crypto
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Apr 21, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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