At 10:24am on Sunday morning in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that the upcoming US Crypto Reserve would contain XRP, SOL, and ADA.
The surprise of his announcement would linger through his 12:11pm update when he added bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) to that list. By that time, XRP had already rallied 28%, SOL had increased 23%, and ADA had rocketed 58%.
That Trump decided to bless three assets that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had previously designated as unregistered securities barely registered with post-Gary Gensler crypto investors.
Indeed, since Trump’s inauguration, lawsuits initiated by Gensler’s SEC against Uniswap, Coinbase, Robinhood, Gemini, Metamask, OpenSea, Justin Sun, and Richard Heart have been abruptly terminated.
Moreover, that Trump decided to first bless non-bitcoin assets after debuting his promise of a sovereign stockpile at a 2024 BTC maximalist conference was also unsurprising after he and his wife decided to launch two meme coins on Solana during his Inauguration week.
Conflicts of interest with Trump’s Crypto Czar
Even less of a surprise is the financial conflict of interest that Trump’s appointed Crypto Czar David Sacks has with XRP, SOL, and ADA. For example, Sacks is one of the earliest investors in SOL via his limited partnership in Multicoin Capital and has publicly laughed about selling his early bags to latecomers.
Sacks appeared to confirm via X that he sold all of his crypto holdings, including his BTC, ETH, and SOL, before the beginning of the Trump inauguration.
Read more: Crypto hasn’t stopped dumping since Donald Trump’s inauguration
Sacks is also a lead investor in Bitwise Asset Management, whose flagship BITW index fund is maximally allocated to all five of the crypto assets that Trump named. Over 97% of BITW consists of XRP, SOL, ADA, BTC, and ETH holdings.
The potential conflicts of interest extend beyond David Sacks to Trump himself, as recent financial disclosures reveal significant holdings in XRP, SOL, and ADA through various Trump entities like World Liberty Financial.
That presidential entity owns staked ETH and wrapped BTC — two assets that Trump endorsed yesterday.
