Steve Hanke Calls US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve ‘Stupidest Idea,’ Here’s Why

Top U.S. economist and professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Steve Hanke said in a recent interview that he does not like the idea of the U.S. government potentially creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve over the next few years.

Hanke is known as a vigorous Bitcoin opponent who frequently criticizes the world’s largest cryptocurrency on his X social media account.

U.S. Bitcoin Reserve is “stupidest idea” per Hanke

In a recent X post, Steve Hanke shared an extract from his recent interview, where he shared his take on a suggestion made by the Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming during a blockchain conference in the U.S. in the summer of 2024.

The prominent U.S. economist said that converting government savings into Bitcoin would put “a drag on the economy” since those savings would not be invested in “real capital assets that produce things.” He compared buying Bitcoin to buying paintings made by Old Masters. Such investment would not be invested in any bankable projects that actually produce anything, he said.

“They would not increase productivity and so forth in the economy,” the expert stressed, while it is very important to increase productivity in order to improve standards of living and prosperity in any economy. Hanke underscored that he is “completely opposed” to a potential Bitcoin strategic reserve in the U.S., calling it “the stupidest idea.”

And in the tweet that accompanies the video extract, Hanke wrote, emphasizing his thought again: “Savings funneled into Bitcoin aren’t building factories, creating jobs, or driving innovation.”

Hanke calls crypto holders “psychopaths”

Last year, Steve Hanke published an X post, in which he referred to crypto holders as psychopaths. Hanke referred to the results of a psychological study conducted in Canada by researchers in the University of Toronto.

The study claimed that cryptocurrency holders have low analytic and scientific thinking and they are “likelier to exhibit psychopathy than the general population,” Hanke summarized.

For completing the study, the researches polled roughly 2,000 Americans. They revealed that crypto holders are inclined to display “dark” personality characteristics, also known as the “Dark Tetrad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism.