In early March of this year, President Donald Trump announced plans for a crypto strategic reserve that would include five cryptocurrencies: bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and cardano.
Federal reserves are held so that the government can tap into them in emergencies. For instance, the government has reserves of military equipment and medical equipment. Of course, probably the most famous federal reserve is its stockpile of gold.
And while some have referred to bitcoin as “digital gold,” there are differences. As Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University, told NPR, as opposed to digital assets like crypto, gold has some intrinsic value. The government is also not a key player in the gold market, but, Prasad said, it would be in the crypto markets.
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So is it time to buy the five cryptocurrencies on the government’s list or not? Only time will tell, but one thing is true: All of them have already enjoyed explosive growth. Here’s how much you would have made if you had bought $1,000 worth of each five years ago.
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The government already owns about 200,000 bitcoin from criminal seizures, according to NPR. With bitcoin trading north of $85,000, that would be worth approximately $17 billion.
Five years ago, on March 28, 2020, bitcoin traded at $6,252. Since then, its price has fluctuated a lot, but with it now trading around $85,000, that’s a nearly 1,300% increase. If you had bought $1,000 worth of it then, you’d have approximately $13,600 today. Not bad.
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One of the largest cryptos by volume, ether (the crypto behind the ethereum blockchain) was trading at $131 five years ago. If you had bought $1,000 worth the crypto then, after a bit of a roller-coaster ride, you still would have ended up with over $14,500 today, with it trading at nearly $1,900.
Lesser known, and lesser valued, than ether and bitcoin, XRP might have been seen as highly speculative five years ago, when it was trading at $0.18. But with it trading at $2.22 now, a $1,000 gamble back then would’ve yielded over $12,000.
Solana was launched in 2020, so if you had bought $1,000 worth of it at $0.95 per token on April 10 of that year, you’d own 1,052 tokens. The crypto is trading around $131 now, giving 1,052 tokens a value of almost $138,000.
