The U.S. government’s move to formalize a strategic Bitcoin reserve was met with skepticism — and, in some corners of the market, outright disappointment.
“That strategic reserve was massively underwhelming for the market,” said Imran Lakha, founder of Options Insight at Deribit’s Crypto Options Unplugged podcast. “Everyone was like, oh, they’re going to buy loads of Bitcoin, they’re going to buy loads of Bitcoins. No, we’ve just got a load of Bitcoin and we’re going to hold onto it. And so the market wasn’t very happy with that in the reaction.”
This comes as President Donald Trump announced plans for a U.S. Crypto Reserve that will include XRP, Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin and Ether.
But not everyone agreed that the market’s reaction was justified.
“I don’t think that the market was disappointed. I think that’s a little strong,” said Stéphane Ouellette, CEO and co-founder of FRNT Financial. “There’s a lot of loud Twitter accounts that were upset about it, but price came off. There’s so much macro volatility at the time. If you had a different kind of underlying backdrop to it, it could have been a completely different market reaction.”
Ouellette pushed back on the narrative that the reserve failed to deliver, arguing that sentiment — and not necessarily fundamentals — drove the short-term price dip.
“I’m constantly finding the bulls in this market, they just get completely out of hand and they just lose the context of what’s realistic,” he added. “The easiest thing for the administration to push through from a strategic reserve standpoint was this.”
Ouellette also noted regulatory complexity, saying there were legal uncertainties around whether the government could even execute a direct Bitcoin purchase through executive order.
“From a sentiment perspective, it’s just complete game changer. I mean, how can you be censored from being involved in the crypto industry when the U.S. government is holding digital assets?” he added. “Almost every friction that you can think of that was enacted by the U.S. government’s perspective on the asset class is in the process of going away.”
Bitcoin was trading at $83,963.25, up 0.1% on the hour and 0.4% over 24 hours, but down 5.2% over two weeks and 12.2% on the month. Despite short-term dips, it’s still up 28.7% year-over-year.
