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U.S. President Donald Trump named XRP, Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) as three assets to be included in a U.S. strategic crypto reserve on Sunday, providing the first details about what such a reserve may look like. Notably, Trump did not initially mention bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) — the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization — in his statement, but he later clarified that the reserve would include these assets as well. Trump made the announcements on Truth Social, his social media platform. "A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA," Trump stated. "I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World. We are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Following Trump's initial announcement, XRP, SOL, and ADA experienced significant price surges. The price of ADA soared by more than 63% within two hours after the president's post, while SOL increased by 23% and XRP by 32%. While fans of XRP, ADA and SOL celebrated the news, some BTC and ETH fans initially responded with a mixture of disappointment and surprise. |
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Congress to Vote on IRS Rule Affecting DeFi |
The U.S. Senate is poised to vote this week on reversing an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule, that the crypto industry has declared a serious threat to decentralized finance (DeFi), according to a person familiar with the Senate's planning.
The IRS's attempt in December to expand the world of brokers required to disclose certain tax information ensnared crypto DeFi projects, and some senators are seeking to use the powers of the Congressional Review Act to erase it, along with another 11th-hour regulation: a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule on digital payment applications. Senator Ted Cruz introduced a CRA resolution to throw out the IRS work, and Senator Pete Ricketts is behind the CFPB resolution, both of which are being programmed for action this week, the person said. “The Biden administration did everything it could to stifle financial innovation in the United States, threatening to send digital asset companies overseas," Majority Leader John Thune said in a statement. "The Senate is working to undo these burdensome regulations one at a time to restore financial freedom for the American people.”
The House Financial Services Committee moved last week to send a matching IRS resolution to the House floor for a vote, and a Senate action would further propel the effort, which needs approvals in both chambers and a presidential signature before it becomes law.
"In a midnight move, the Biden administration issued their decentralized finance rule, which directly and immediately would harm American cryptocurrency innovation and drive development overseas," said Cruz, the Texas Republican leading the charge against the IRS rule. "This week Congress will vote on my resolution to rescind that regulation. I'm confident we will.” |
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Metaplanet Buys More 156 BTC |
Metaplanet (3350) purchased 156 BTC for $13.4 million at $85,590 per bitcoin. As a result, Metaplanet has achieved a BTC yield of 31.8% year-to-date. As of March 3, Metaplanet now holds 2,391 BTC, for a total amount of $196.3 million, at an average price of $82,100 per bitcoin.
Also, according to Simon Gerovich, CEO of Metaplanet, the company has been formally invited by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq (Nasdaq) to introduce their platforms and functions. "We are considering the best way to make Metaplanet shares more accessible to investors around the world," Gerovich said in an X post.
Metaplanet is up approximately $21.3 million on its bitcoin strategy, while its shares are up 20% in Monday's market, with shares at 4,010 yen.
Metaplanet became the second publicly traded company to announce they bought the bitcoin dip after Bitdeer Technologies said they purchased more. |
Coinbase Tallies Cost of SEC Tangles |
As the smoke clears on its own newly dropped enforcement case, Coinbase is demanding the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cough up a record of its spending on investigations and actions against the wider industry in recent years
The biggest U.S. crypto exchange is filing a Freedom of Information Act request — using its contractor History Associates Inc. — to obtain internal agency accounting for the expense of its enforcement campaign involving digital assets businesses. The document seeks total costs for investigations and enforcement actions in the past four years; a listing of targeted companies; the numbers of employees and contractors working on the cases; and financial information about the running of the previous leadership's crypto enforcement unit. The SEC has been under new management since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who elevated Commissioner Mark Uyeda to be acting chairman. Uyeda began a dramatic reversal of the agency's crypto stance, replacing legal officials, snuffing out investigations and dismissing long-running court cases, including the one against Coinbase. "We're asking the SEC to produce this information voluntarily and subject to their FOIA obligations, without making Coinbase or anybody else have to go to court to get what we think the American people deserve to know," said Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, in an interview with CoinDesk.
Coinbase has pursued the SEC in federal court before on public-records disputes, and the company's effort to reveal communications about the regulator's internal discussions on crypto oversight is still an active case.
Even as the agency has freed digital assets businesses from enforcement cases, some in the industry have called for the SEC to pay more harshly for the way it handled the sector under Chair Gary Gensler, including requests to fire more staff who were involved. Grewal insisted that this records request isn't retaliatory but that transparency about what happened is necessary.
"This is not just about Coinbase or anybody else taking a victory lap or trying to rub the SEC or anybody else's nose in their admission that the last four years were a mistake," he said. "This is much more about learning the lessons of history so that we never have to repeat them."
While the public has a right to view government documents, the process for obtaining them often runs into agency roadblocks and can stretch into months or years. And the SEC can cite exceptions that include cases remaining active, which still includes a number of crypto matters involving such firms as Kraken, Ripple and Crypto.com. But Grewal said closed cases such as Coinbase's and the many other firms getting good news in recent days should be available to scrutiny. "Let's get the facts on the table," Grewal said. "Let's tally up what the costs were. Let's consider whether there were some benefits that ought to be measured as well. And then let's decide, is this what we want for our country and for our economy, and how do we craft rules to make sure that this doesn't happen again?" |
The Takeaway: 4 Questions About the Reserve |
By Ben Schiller
At the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville in July, Donald Trump pledged to create a "strategic national bitcoin reserve."
By Sunday morning March 2, that reserve also included ether (ETH), XRP, Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) alongside bitcoin (BTC). Trump’s message on Truth Social said his presidential working group was moving forward on creating the larger-scope crypto reserve, igniting a torrent of feedback from across the crypto community. Many complained that the reserve isn’t just sticking to bitcoin. Others asked if the U.S. should be stockpiling tokens like XRP and Cardano at all. Others wondered what might have changed Trump’s mind.
Trump said he wanted to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world” and his timing seemed aimed at retail traders. “I love the genius of announcing a strategic reserve on a Sunday, when traditional markets are closed and Wall Street sleeps. For the first time, retail investors win,” tweeted Trump’s son, Eric Trump, Sunday night. The assets’ prices rose almost immediately, with ADA benefitting in particular.
Still, there’s a lot we don’t know about the “Crypto Strategic Reserve.” Trump’s Sunday morning message was the first time the administration had said there would be five assets in the portfolio. Beyond that, details are sketchy. Here are some big questions.
Is he serious?
The U.S. already owns more than 200,000 BTC it claimed through seizures. Experts say this could be the basis for a National Reserve without Congressional approval. But a multi-coin reserve would surely require Congress to pass legislation.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis has proposed legislation that would see the U.S. buy $20 billion in the first year, and 20,000 more BTC in each of the following four years to take the U.S. stockpile to one million BTC. Lummis’s views on the now-expanded multi-coin reserve are unknown. She was planning to meet with industry leaders to discuss the matter on March 11. Will she now propose different legislation? The other, subsidiary question is how the U.S. might pay for the expanded portfolio. Crypto is publicly traded and has a public price. It’s not clear from Trump’s message whether his administration will seek a new spending appropriation. Could the U.S. sell gold to buy crypto? We don’t know.
Why Include Solana, XRP and Cardano? Will There Be Others?
As many on X have noted, there are logical reasons to include bitcoin in a strategic reserve. “We're talking about a reserve, and Bitcoin is the undisputed store of value for the digital age,” noted Hunter Horsley, the CEO of Bitwise. Bitcoin is “digital gold” and BTC’s “dominance” of the market is still north of 60%. BTC is the first asset any holder holds. It’s harder to make a straightforward case for the other coins. For example, Cardano, with a dominance of 1.1%, is best known as an environment to build decentralized applications (dApps). It doesn’t have ETFs like bitcoin and ether and isn’t accepted by TradFi to nearly the same extent. The five coins are being chosen for two different reasons. BTC and ETH are fully decentralized. Solana, XRP and Cardano are Made in America, and Trump may be including them to promote the U.S. crypto industry.
Trump’s announcement seemed to leave open the possibility that the reserve could include other coins in the future.
Will the States Follow Suit? CoinDesk’s Jesse Hamilton wrote recently that up to 22 states are considering creating their own crypto reserves, mostly in bitcoin. Will they now consider a wider range of assets?
Will Crypto Support It?
The reaction to Trump’s announcement across professional crypto was tepid-to-critical. Trump announced the reserve at Nashville aiming to please his audience. But today it’s not clear that the crypto industry is 100% behind his plan to bring the reserve about. If the measure gets pushback in Congress, the administration will need industry support, so that might be a worry for its backers. Certainly, Polymaket bettors are skeptical that the reserve will come about soon.
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