Key Insights:
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse was accused of lobbying against creating the US Bitcoin reserve.
However, the CEO commented, saying he wanted a multi-token reserve instead.
Bitcoin supporters criticized him for selling XRP while wanting the US govt to buy it.
XRP supporters criticized creating just Bitcoin reserve, claiming it lacked utility.
Riot Platform VP of Research Pierre Rochard alleged that Ripple was lobbying against the creation of the Bitcoin Reserve.
Rochard's Riot Platforms is a Bitcoin miner that recently followed MicroStrategy into buying Bitcoin via debt. A shortage in Bitcoin's supply is expected to push Riot's Bitcoin reserves up due to a phenomenon called supply shock.
Rochard might not want a multi-token reserve, which seems to be the most likely outcome because it would dilute the amount of Bitcoins bought by the US government. That, in turn, would hurt the aspirations of Riot Platforms and similar companies.
After the claim, Rochard made over a hundred tweets and reposts at press time, all against Ripple.
Last year, Donald Trump's pre-election statements claimed that all of the remaining Bitcoins should be mined in the USA and his commitment on creating a Bitcoin Reserve. After the elections, the reserve took a wider approach after it was named "National Digital Asset Stockpile" and not Bitcoin Stockpile.
What made allegations against him appear to be true was his statement on the need of a multi-token reserve and not just a Bitcoin reserve. This was supported by Ripple's CTO who believes XRP could become the worl's reserve currency one day.
However, despite all arguments for and against Garlinghouse, it is still unproven if he was really lobbying against a Bitcoin Reserve. If we trust the publicly available information, we see that he opposed the sole inclusion of Bitcoin in the reserve, something that the government has already seemingly agreed to.
XRP supporters responded to statements by those of Bitcoin in the usual way with memes and strong statements. A user put focus on strong institutional partnerships where XRP could leverage its ledger (XRPL) to make banking more efficient, while another user tweeted this meme below.
On his third day in the office, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to form a working group, that will explore the creation of a "National Digital Assets Stockpile".
What surprised the markets was that this digital assets stockpile would possibly include cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. Till that time, the markets were only expecting just a Bitcoin Reserve.
If we go in line with Donald Turmp's first term, he instituted an America First Policy that gave special preference to American businesses. Hence, a strategic reserve created for cryptocurrencies is highly likely to include other US-based cryptocurrencies like XRP, Ondo Finance, Ethereum (mostly US-based), and wrapped versions of these tokens, similar to WLFI's portfolio.
Bitcoin maximalists, on the other hand, want only Bitcoin to be included in the reserve. This is unlikely to happen because if we take a look at Trump's own organization World Liberty Financial, we see around 19 major assets (over $1000 in holding) and around 40 assets in total at press time. Amongst them, Ethereum has the highest share of $139 million out of the $310 million, the rest being mostly in stablecoins.
At Voice of Crypto, we think that government buying and reserve keeping centralizes cryptocurrencies, which were essentially created to be decentralized.
Rather, it is supportive regulations that helps the industry innovate further. A slew of cases against crypto companies under the SEC with most of them involving charges outside of SEC's jurisdiction was the most troubling thing for the markets.
Further, innovation only follows when there is genuine demand. An inflated demand created by Bitcoin corporates and governments would only turn the crypto markets into a giant trader's arena, and innovation on cases like Agentic AI, Metaverses, NFT-ticketing, etc would stop.
In the future, if more governments adopt this accumulation trend, which has already got few approvals, we could see an artificial inflation in Bitcoin making it more centralized than ever, defeating its original purpose as mentioned by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.