US Government Might Use Bitcoin as Reserve Asset With 200,000 BTC Already in Treasury

• Daim’s CEO Bryan Courchesne defends the possibility of adding Bitcoin into the US strategic reserve, though he admits impending challenges. 

• Courchesne also believes that it is almost impossible to make the US the sole miner of all Bitcoin as miners move to where energy is cheaper. 

The recent discussions surrounding the incorporation of Bitcoin (BTC) into the US strategic reserve are gaining momentum as a pro-crypto presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is rumored to publicly announce a decision on the same at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville next week. 

Drawing insight from our previous publication, several industry key players, including 10x Research’s Markus Thielen and BnkToTheFuture Simon Dixon, have hinted at the availability of sufficient information to authenticate these speculations. 

In this discussion, CEO and founder of crypto investing firm Daim, Bryan Courchesne, made a profound analysis on CNBC’s Fast Money last week, delving into Trump’s recent interest in the Bitcoin space and its impact on the overall market. 

Firstly, Courchesne admitted that a successful integration of Bitcoin into the country’s strategic reserve is difficult but doable. Speaking on this, the Daim CEO explained that the US Justice Department (DoJ) holds 200,000 BTC ($13 billion); henceforth, moving it to the Department of Treasury would not be very difficult. 

Courchesne Comments on Trump’s Bitcoin Mining Plans

According to Daim’s CEO, the DoJ has, on multiple occasions, used its position as a random Bitcoin seller to push the price down in the short term. In this case, integrating the asset as a strategic reserve would make them long-term holders, which in the long run would push the price up. 

The Justice Department holds about 200,000 units of bitcoin so the United States is the largest holder of bitcoin, and so they could easily just move that over to the Department of Treasury and start right there and have $13 billion worth of bitcoin on the balance sheet. So, it is a possible move; it just could be tough to get done. But what happens is the Justice Department is holding these units of bitcoin. They’ve been a random seller in the space.

Commenting on Trump’s recent support for Bitcoin mining and plans to have all Bitcoins mined in the US, Courchesne admitted that while his plans encourage innovation, the widespread presence of miners and their motivation makes it impossible to mine all Bitcoins in the country. According to him, miners move to where energy is cheaper, and this is evident in their temporal concentration in Texas. Sometimes, the mining concentration moves to New York, then to Wyoming, and back to Texas. 

There’s a wide diversification of miners. They’re spread all across the world, and it really goes to where is energy the cheapest. And if you could even put free energy here, another country will give incentives to have bitcoins mined in their country. It’s just something that won’t get done. 100% of the bitcoins mined in the United States won’t happen, but more of it happening here by many different companies is always better for the space.

Not objecting to the position of Trump entirely, Courchesne disclosed that lowering energy costs for miners would enable them to have more Bitcoin on their balance sheets. 

At press time, Bitcoin was struggling to sustain its value at $66k as it currently experiences a neutral market sentiment, declining by 0.8% in the last 24 hours.