Critics on the right and left say the bitcoin reserve is a pointless industry handout — and using tariff revenue is even dumber.

IF DONALD TRUMP’S sweeping global tariffs send household good prices soaring and drive the economy into recession, at least one industry could profit.

The Trump administration is considering using tariff revenues to buy Bitcoin for a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” a top administration crypto official said in an interview last week.

The White House’s proposal is driving interest from crypto industry figures who have made building the reserve one of their top priorities.

It is uniting critics on the right and left, however, who have cast the reserve as a pointless industry giveaway that will come at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. Using tariff money would add insult to injury, they say.

  • caffinatedone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    4 hours ago

    There’s no surplus, even with the extreme tariffs that trump is pushing. Given the economic destruction that they’re likely to cause, they’re probably a net loss for the treasury (and certainly are if one considers the damage that they’re doing to the IRS).

    The reasons that the ‘sovereign wealth fund’ idea keeps coming up are:

    1. All of the cool authoritarians have one
    2. trump really, really, wants a slush fund to grift off of

    That’s it.

    • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      The country absolutely has an enormous surplus, it’s just that we waste it all on military contracts with little to no return.