David Sacks, the White House artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto czar has claimed that the American government’s lack of a "long-term strategy" on cryptocurrency has had a negative impact on American taxpayers.
"Over the past decade, the federal government sold approximately 195,000 bitcoin for proceeds of $366 million. If the government had held the bitcoin, it would be worth over $17 billion today," Sacks wrote in an X post.
"That’s how much it has cost American taxpayers not to have a long-term strategy."
Sacks also posted a screenshot of a prompt and calculations by Grok, AI chatbot, as the source of those figures.
Grok is developed by xAI, the AI company that billionaire and owner of X Elon Musk launched in 2023.
The South African entrepreneur was selected by President Donald Trump to serve within the new administration, heading up the "Working Group on Digital Asset Markets" formed in January through an executive order.
The group is working on a multitude of tasks related to digital assets including the "potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile" and proposing "criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts."
Trump slammed the Biden administration in a post to truth social on their crypto management.
"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," said the President.
He followed up the post to say “And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable cryptocurrencies, will be the heart of the Reserve. I also love Bitcoin and Ethereum!”
The crypto market has responded to these comments in the past few days with Bitcoin jumping 5.5%, Cardano 41% and XRP rising 19.8%.
There has also been some “surprising” backlash from prominent tech and crypto leaders after the strategic reserve announcement.
It’s “wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes,” tweeted Joe Lonsdale, a tech entrepreneur who described himself in this thread as pro-crypto and broadly supportive of the Trump administration
This comes as the White House is set to host a crypto summit later today (Friday AEDT) featuring high profile founders, CEOs and investors.
More to come
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