I admit that the contest for stupidest idea of the Trump administration is heated and contentious. But surely this must be strongly in the running:
Crypto prices surged Sunday after President Trump said he would move forward on a U.S. crypto strategic reserve that will include bitcoin and ether, as well as three smaller and riskier tokens.
“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration,” said Trump in a Sunday post on his social-media platform Truth Social. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”
Questions abound. How big will the CSR be? Where is the money coming from? I don't recall Congress passing an appropriation. How can it make sense to create a crypto reserve out of deficit spending? Why does the US need a crypto reserve? It's not something we'll ever be short of.
Is there any legitimate argument at all for this? Anything?
For a kleptocracy it is not dumb at all.
+1
Exactly. The fact that he calls it a "strategic reserve" is telling: unlike oil, or pharmaceuticals, or key manufacturing inputs, there is absolutely zero harm (and frankly, actually a lot of benefit) if for some "emergency" reason the supply of cryptocurrency available to the public/US government were to dry up.
So, it has nothing to do with anything "strategic" and is instead a way to short term goose the prices of crypto (making millions of crypto-fanboys happy, and a few well-heeled crypto folks very happy), and, if implemented, to long-term redirect taxpayer money towards "buying" intangible fictictious assets from regime supporters.
+1
Voilà.
Bitcoin was trading at about $85,000 earlier today. After the latest news, it surged to over $94,000, a gain of almost 10%.
So, yes, the kleptocrats are happy. For now.
I still think they're dumb. Crypto is inherently worthless, and when tough times come again (as tough times inevitably will) it will be priced at its natural state.
Not completely worthless, a high value token that can be exchanged across country borders without going through a bank is great for wholesale drug dealers, money launderers and extortionists. It makes perfect sense for a corrupt government to support it.
+1
For those who don't know, this scam is tied to the weird Fort Knox thing. The idea is sort of the authoritarian grifter version of the "Trillion Dollar Coin" idea that went around liberal circles back in the old days.
Ninja'd!!
"authoritarian grifter version of the 'Trillion Dollar Coin' idea"
Well, except the TDC was a too-clever-by-half workaround of the debt ceiling, whereas a crypto reserve is just a way to trade your tax dollars for meaningless fictitious assets, with Trump fellow-travelers profiting all the while.
In other words: while the former was a goofy attempt to solve a real problem, the latter is outright graft.
The former was just a bigger version of what the Fed and Treasury already do. There was nothing system-breaking about it.
For more, from an actual Treasury reporting expert, see here: https://www.crisesnotes.com/a-scam-built-atop-an-accounting-gimmick-wrapped-in-bullshit-why-visiting-fort-knox-is-not-about-selling-gold-but-is-about-buying-bitcoin/
"So if the certificates are just a book entry in some accounting ledger, why does it matter that they are “gold” certificates? Couldn’t you just sell a “avoiding the debt ceiling” certificate which promised redemption in “avoiding-the-debt-ceiling brownie points”? The answer is- yes. The Treasury would just need legal authorization to issue “avoiding the debt ceiling” certificates. This only sounds sillier than gold certificates because it's more honest."
"The former was just a bigger version of what the Fed and Treasury already do. There was nothing system-breaking about it."
I never said there was anything "system-breaking" about it. Just that it was a little precious. FWIW, I actually met the Treasury attorney who initially floated the platinim coin idea at a cocktail party; he was a little amused by how controversial an idea it ended up becoming.
Yep, this is it, in addition just completely fucking Treasuries as the reserve currency.
Not because they want to kill the reserve currency, but because they're too stupid to understand how it actually works.
The most optimistic reading of this announcement is that there will be no crypto reserve, and that the intent here is simply to boost the price of Bitcoin so Trump and his crypto pals can make a quick buck. It's the pump of yet another pump-and-dump scheme.
Still, I wouldn't put it past him to actually try to build a crypto reserve.
There's something to that; absent significant further erosion in the constitution, Trump cannot create a crypto reserve without congressional action.
But, in the meantime, $trump coins are up ~30% since Our Idiot President posted this on his twitter knockoff today.
There's apparently some thought that it would be financed as an intra-governmental transfer. If I get the gist of it (from the substack cmayo links to), it would work by statutory revaluation of the gold reserves and using the resulting increased valuation to buy crypto. The specific provision would presumably be an obscure provision in one of the current omnibus-type bills. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see much difference between that and the platinum coin in spirit, but the magic invocation of gold could give it a respectability that the other wouldn't have.
If that's the play, it's kind of emblematic of this regime-- creating nothing from nothing, but with a big public show.
That would still be a disbursement from the Treasury, since the Fort Knox gold belongs to the Treasury. So a law of some kind would be necessary to authorize.
Doesn't Mango Mussolini get ever richer if the value of "$Trump" coins goes up? Is it any more complicated than that?
Wow. Now we all can be on the hook when this asset bubble bursts.
Donny, you're out of your element!
Going bankrupt is exactly his element. As is losing money on dumb investments.
No, his element is making other people lose money on dumb investments. People like to argue that running casinos into bankruptcy is an indication of how stupid Trump is, which demonstrates only that they don't know what actually happened.
What actually happened was that Trump borrowed a fuckton of money to start up a casino in Atlantic City. Except that he was never on the hook personally for that money; it was loaned to the casino company without recourse. Trump got the casino up and running, and started using the borrowed money to pay himself exorbitant "management" fees. These got so big that the casino's cash flow couldn't cover them. So, when the loans came due, there was no money to pay them, and the casino went bust. All of those bondholders took an enormous bath.
Trump, on the other hand, made out like a fucking bandit. The shenanigans may not prove that Trump is actually smart, but it demonstrates conclusively that he has an immense cunning for running a grift and absolutely no shame whatsoever.
Is the idea to reduce the fluctuations in crypto value? Buy coin whenever the price dips below some level, sell it whenever the price goes above some level?
The rationale being that crypto will be more useful if the price is more stable?
But isn't the whole thing about crypto that it's a Ponzi scheme--it's only use being for blackmail payments, drugs, etc? Do we really want to make things better for those purposes?
"The rationale being that crypto will be more useful if the price is more stable?"
Stable prices would dampen the only thing that crypto has going for it (aside from utility in criminal transactions): FOMO.
+1
Well, yes, that's how actual digital currencies (Like ISK or Linden or whatever from the vast history) act - they act like real currencies, shifting investment and coin creation and destruction to match the inflationary pressures so they can be used to purchase whatever is needed to purchase in that specific currency (Linden's base sink pays for processing/virtual space int he world; the ISK is used to buy access to its game).
But the scame cryptos - and what has made Bitcoin from a currency into a scam - is to pump demand and then sell to profit, not caring about drops later.
So yeah, most are now ponzi schemes, not currencies meant as a means of exchange.
So is the President officially doubting the stability of the US dollar?
The President wants to destroy the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
He doesn't care about the dollar's value at all.
It is a side effect, and he doesn't think about it.
Potato, potato.
You get a new Harley?
Is there any legitimate argument at all for this?
I think the “legitimate” threat is laughed at.
Bill Maher offered a scary extrapolation of 2.0s trashing of legitimacy, He cited all the federal enforcement agencies now solidly 2.0, polling showing 48% of Americans are (still !) okay with Trump, and MAGA already chanting “2028”
He wondered if we'll even have a 2028 election.
There will certainly be elections in 2028. The question is whether Trump will be able to intimidate/kill all serious Democratic candidates (like Putin does).
Even if we do, Vance will preside over counting the votes.
You do realize the word preside conveys no actually authority.
Don't expect to hear a peep from Congress.
It's just bad. If the United States backs privately owned crypto-currencies, it is falling for the grift. Now if the United States mints its own crypto we might be talking...
As mentioned, the plan is to sell gold reserves to buy crypto. It’s a scam top to bottom. I have always thought that the main powers of the state are force and money (basically monopolies of each), we should outlaw crypto as a matter of national security. And btw, shame on those Dems who jumped on the crypto bandwagon.
I suspect that it's more crypto explicitly backed by gold reserves. That's the way we do it these days, Auric. Irradiating Fort Knox's gold seems somehow ... quaint. Something simply Not Done by contemporary supervillains.
One more addition to the FAFO files.
Again, I'm not a betting person, but if I were, I'd bet $5 that the convicted felon was planning to use the gold in Ft. Knox as the means to obtain cryptocurrencies. In his pathetically simple mind, he believes he's just replacing one US reserve for another.
Does he need legislation? You're joking, right? The guy will produce an EO directing Treasury to replace the gold reserve with a crypto reserve.
What if MAGA learns crypto is part of the "globalist" agenda?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rufaskamau/2022/10/06/bitcoins-philosophy-and-political-promise-of-borderlessnes-and-solving-inefficiencies/
https://btcprague.com/the-philosophy-and-ethics-of-bitcoin/#
https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/bitcoin-and-global-hegemony/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rufaskamau/2022/04/12/how-bitcoin-is-empowering-people-to-become-sovereign-individuals
They need to read more than four words to figure out. Never going to happen.
Russia needs crypto to bypass sanctions?
Oligarchs need crypto to bypass taxes and laws?
Dumbest Idea? So much competition with these treasonous pieces of excrement. How about the President of the US deciding to give up being the leader of free world, which essentially occurred on Feb 28th?
Kevin, it's not a dumb idea. Corrupt, yes. But not dumb, for all the reasons stated above.
Seems to like like the con is tied right into the name -- crypt -- where you bury dead things.
(Yeah, I know it refers to something too entangled and coded to decipher.)
Ha ha. [sigh]. So, yeah, I’m doing my taxes, and the thought that a chunk of that money may go to the purchase of fictitious, useless, anonymous, and speculative assets that make Chinese mobsters wealthy is making me feel less-than-wonderful. Have a nice day.
To be fair, the Dumbest.Idea.Ever was Donald Trump as President.
From last week: Eric Trump says 'buy the dips' after Bitcoin crashes below $89K…
Of course he knew the announcement was coming.
Oh. That's very different.
I thought he said buy FROM the dips.
Nevermind.
Who is going to be in control of the wallet?
"The main argument for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve seems to be that Bitcoin holders worry about an impending shortage of greater fools and need the US government to act as the greatest fool of last resort.”
-- David Frum 12/21/24
Holds up pretty well, I think
"Is there any legitimate argument at all for this? Anything?"
It sends more free money to Elon.
Duh.