Today Donald Trump promised to create a strategic bitcoin reserve if he's elected. Even for Trump, does this make any sense?
Put aside the question of whether bitcoin is a real thing or just a mass delusion. Let's assume it's real. We still don't stockpile every real thing. We don't have a strategic Lego reserve or a strategic airplane reserve. We only stockpile things that we might suddenly need in large quantities.
We stockpile oil because we might need it if OPEC cuts off supplies. We stockpile vaccines because they take a long time to manufacture and we might need them quickly in case an epidemic strikes. We stockpile rare earth minerals in case China decides to get nasty about them.
But what conceivable emergency would prompt a sudden need for bitcoin? And if, for some reason, we did suddenly need a huge amount of bitcoin, what would prevent us from just buying it on the open market? The whole point of crypto is that it's decentralized and under the control of no government.
Before you tell me: Yes, I know this is just Trump pandering to his fans. Still, his actual policy pronouncements generally make some sense. This one is like promising to create a strategic baseball card reserve. Is there any possible way of interpreting it that isn't completely out to lunch?
We actually do have a strategic airplane reserve? A couple kinds, even.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/309th_Aerospace_Maintenance_and_Regeneration_Group
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104583/civil-reserve-air-fleet/
But your point is very true. What would this 'reserve' of bitcoin do?
Generate Carbon pollution?
Yep.
Hold the price of bitcoin up while they are creating it.
How tho?
Make Elon and Peter even richer.
the dogecoin piece.
Neither are invested substantially in bitcoin...
You're confusing junkyards with strategic reserves.
You didn't read the articles, clearly.
A junkyard is where things are being disposed of. A stripping yard strips them.
An aircraft boneyard carefully preserves them under protective coatings so they can be reassembled later. Which is exactly the opposite of disposal.
My second example is how we pay civil aircraft owners to keep them running even if they don't have enough flight hours... so they can be used as a reserve source of aircraft.
The idea probably came from one of the bitcoin bros who are splashing money at him. Filling the strategic oil reserve increases the price of oil, so some brainbox looking for a quick killing figured out it would work for bitcoin. I'm sure they're busy devising other ways to monetize their contributions to the commonweal.
dingdingding.
He has no idea what bitcoin is, he is basing policy on whatever some random person told him last. It'll change when the next person tells him the opposite.
He has no idea what bitcoin is, but he's pretty sure he can insider trade on actions of a strategic reserve while president.
It'd be easy to hide and US actions would probably have a greater market effect than they do on oil or wheat.
Everything about the Republican backed initiatives has a commerce component to it (except those that pander to religious conservatives, and even they are suspect. For example, it's become expected that running for the GOP nomination is a great way to get your book promotion going, get speaking gigs, and get invites to talk shows (where you can talk about your book and fish for more speaking gigs and woo investors).
The Trump campaign took this idea and injected steroids, making every. last. thing. part of the commerce platform. Did you know there's an online store? Even the riff-raff is in on the take, I pass Trump merchandise stands all the time (at least until the local authorities shut them down for lacking permits and paying sales tax). It's all one big grift from top to bottom. Trump may be a lousy businessman but he knows an opportunity when one presents itself and politics is just a massive business opportunity - coming up fast behind religion.
I think a strategic Lego reserve is a good idea. As far as I can tell my grandson has pretty much cornered the market and a government program to buy Legos would make him rich. That is, if you could get him to part with them.
strategic Lego like STRATEGO ? the board game we played till we found the flaws and went back to paper & pencil battleship on a grid..
He was speaking, I believe, to a hall full of crypto people. That explains why he didn't mention strategic reserves of golf balls or baseball cards. Those will come when he addresses halls full of golf ball and baseball card producers
"We stockpile oil because we might need it if OPEC cuts off supplies."
There are two groups of people who never get thus right: political scientists and journalists. OPEC can't "cut off supplies" and never has.
You do know opec in reality has cut production or cut off nations with an embargo before, right? And is currently in a lower production mode?
And that it's a continuum such that even reducing supplies can have a profound economic effect. But this commenter is a troll, so one shouldn't expect the arguments to hold water. (This one is actually closer to something coherent than most.)
OPEC would not sell oil to certain nations for a few weeks in 1973 but other countries bought their oil and sold that to the U.S., U.K, Canada etc.
So why was I in those gas lines in 1974, only able to fill up on certain days?
Panic buying by irrational consumers.
nope
Panic buying was part of it and also panic government policies at the time.
No, because roboto's statements are bullshit even today.
The embargo wasn't lifted until 1974.
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1973-74
"And is currently in a lower production mode?" that is in fact nonsense. The Saudi's are producing well above the econimically optimal point for themselves solely as a favor to the west. (If they were to cut production by 10% the price they would receive would increase by 20-30% increasing their revenues, decreasing their costs and extending their ability to produce oil.)
A) Saudi Arabia isn't the only OPEC nation
B) Your statement is bullshit
Why make it, then?
Maybe the more important point to make here is that the US presently a net exporter of oil, quite unlike the situation in the 1970s, and thus has very little to fear from any embargo.
Which is why congress has ordered administrations to reduce the size of the SPR by 2/3rds over 2 decades starting in 2015.
So they will have a place where to put the Bitcoins....
It’s a combination of validating the incels and of course some grift TBD later.
Alas, Trump's suffering from a lack of a strategic brain cell reserve.
"Still, his actual policy pronouncements generally make some sense."
For Gawd's sake, Kevin, WTF have you been the last decade?
I think you missed the italics on "SOME". (Even when you copy and paste the italics don't show up in a comment and I haven't figured out how to make that happen here either. This commenting system is lacking in pretty much everything.)
It doesn't mean that his pronouncements wouldn't end up in causing really stupid highly counterproductive policies with ruinous effects.
By the way, Canada has a maple syrup stockpile. Now there's one that really does make sense.
'Some' as in, they have a kernel or reason behind them.
But there's no way to make even a mathematical case for a bitcoin reserve; they're inherently unstable.
i don't know how this idea isn't out to lunch, but maybe you should ask your republican lunching crew this tuesday.
Well, the genius behind this idea is that bitcoin requires computer servers, so it's a sop to the folks who make all the parts and chips for the servers -- China!
China has always been a net importer of chips and has never made the high end chips involved in bit mining.
Since when do Trump's policy proposals make any sense?
"sense" as in "dollars and cents"?
In a distant imaginary way.
usually there is some logic to his proposals. mostly illogic mind you, but there isn't even that in this case.
On this one I feel relatively certain there was a PowerPoint with lots of charts and ROI graphs based on pure speculation.
He is litteraly pandering to everyone. Promising anything in hopes of getting enough votes to win. The lies and exagerated promises are going fly out of mouth faster than usual.
i am old enough to remember when bill clinton was referred to pejorative as the pander bear.
It’s to protect American money launderers and con artists from those evil Chinese pig butchers.
.. and the SEC (he promised to fire its head first day in office).
If the US had a strategic bitcoin reserve we could threaten to sell it all at once and crash the market.
Like a threat you could always have in case the bit-bros stopped coughing up real money for you.
I am sure that what Dump means is that the "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" is his personal bitcoin account. What he needs is the government, or tech bro billionaires looking for favors, to fund it.
don-OLD has an emergency requirement for bitcoin voters and their US dollars
Ya' see, if ya geet enough bits, ya can put together a real coin.
So Kevin hand-waves away Trump's "this is the last time you'll have to vote" as a nothingburger brain fart... but goes into (semi)deep thought about Trump promising a bitcoin reserve? Remind me again, why do we take Kevin seriously?
Actually, I was thinking the same regarding Kevin’s thoughts on Trump’s mass deportation promises. And with that it’s one of his main campaign promises with his followers waving placards saying “mass deportation now”. I put this up there with his “no tax on tips” pander.
Kevin's attitude partly explain why there are non-MAGA that would vote for Trump: If you ignore all the damage Trump is going to do, then maybe he is not that bad.
If you believe in the crypto con, then this would just be like a modern day gold reserve. They want it as a worldwide currency and there is a finite supply. Whichever people and countries hold the most bitcoin at the end of the game are the winners. Dumb-ass game, though.
Crypto will replace fiat currency because governments are destined to fail in the impending societal collapse. That's the libertarian fever dream.
Meanwhile, crypto libertarians need government to become their biggest investor.
Trump & GOP say: Sounds good to us!
No one is going to take crypto in a societal collapse.
Of course Mad Max world will have a smoothly functioning internet and plenty of chip fabs and device manufacturers and retailers . . .
Right? The one thing remaining after the apocalypse will be the internet and massive server farms.
If you wanted to point your finger at one thing indicating that the USA is in decline it would be the billions of dollars being spent and tons of pollution being generated to produce absolutely nothing.
t-Rumps "brain" is like a sieve with only bits of words hanging on for dear life in the holes. It's a soup of lost and partial words in there, if he can find them. Oh right, he spews them.
The purpose of making the promise is to receive lots of tech bro cash. And if he were to actually go through with it, it would make a small group of extremely wealthy people even wealthier. So as a Republican policy proposal, it checks out.
“like a modern day gold reserve”
“point your finger”
OMG! A new James Bond movie “Crypto-finger!”
????
How much bitcoin is produced in the US vs other countries? Is the US in the position with respect to bitcoin that Saudi Arabia was in the 70's - when they could have a massive effect on oil price by themselves?
Of course oil is actually needed in economies whereas bitcoin is only needed for money laundering and pumping up bubbles.
It's not just a crazy Trump idea. It's a bill.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis announces bill for US Treasury to buy 1 million bitcoin worth $68 billion: Bitcoin 2024
https://www.theblock.co/post/307914/sen-cynthia-lummis-announces-bill-for-us-treasury-to-buy-1-million-bitcoin-worth-69-billion-bitcoin-2024
Lummis wants the US to buy 1 million of the total 19.8 million bitcoin already mined. (The cap is 21 million.) It seems the crypto crowd has concluded there are only so many hooligans and fools who want to buy crypto, so forcing the US to buy a chunk will create demand and hike prices.
Grifters like Trump and Lummis no doubt will profit off the lunacy.
This is today's GOP, thinking first of what the American people need. A crypto "reserve"! Of course!
For those who like me wondered if it is actually form the Onion, here is from her page:
https://www.lummis.senate.gov/press-releases/lummis-announces-revolutionary-proposal-to-supercharge-the-dollar-bolster-u-s-economy/
Make sure you don't hold something that can spill or break when you read it.
A strategic golf ball reserve would mean Trump would finally have substantial balls…
he's just pandering to his base. but if i have to come up with another possible reason, some bitcoin bros promised him a bunch of money if he has the US buy up a few hundred billion in bitcoin in some way that funnels money to them. with trump, it's always a scam.
Personally, I think it's a signal to the libertarian tech bros: he's telling them he'll create a large artificial demand for Bitcoin, thus increasing value for those who have large holdings.
Re the headline: Good one, Kevin.