Is It a Good Idea for the US Government to Stockpile Bitcoin? - Ep. 683
Episode publishedPodcast: UnchainedUnchained
Transcript preview
Preview only
George: I think if you think about the original motivation for Bitcoin, the philosophy behind it, if you like, the more the government has, and that's, again, not just the US government but governments in general, the less it's actually able to do the things that its founders wanted it to do.
Laura: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of the Cryptopians. I started covering crypto 9 years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the August 2, 2024 episode of Unchained.
With I Trust Capital, you can buy and sell crypto in a tax advantage retirement account. Enjoy significant tax advantages, 247 access, and the industry's lowest fees. Polkadot is the original and leading layer 0 blockchain with over 2,000 plus developers, and the Polkadot 2 point o upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Join the community atpogadot.network/ecosystem/community. Today's guest is George Seljian, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Welcome, George.
George: It's nice to be here, Laura.
Laura: We're here to discuss some proposals for the US government to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. One of these was by former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and another by Wyoming senator Cynthia Lemus. And the 3rd presidential candidate, Robert f Kennedy junior, also made a similar suggestion at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. I'm sure listeners have heard about this, but let's just make sure they understand the details. So, in broad strokes, can you describe what it is that these, different speakers at the conference proposed, in particular Trump and Lemus?
George: Sure. Yeah. Well, all of them are proposing a plan that would have the government in some way invest in Bitcoin, which is novel, and, for the United States anyway. And the plans differ, among other things, they differ in the scale of the investment, whereas Trump's plan is the least ambitious because it would mainly just have the government promise not to sell Bitcoin. It already possesses that it confiscated when it, cracked down on certain operations that use Bitcoin.
And, the others have the government making positive investments that is actually going out and buying Bitcoin, where the Lummis proposal would have it buy 1 1,000,000 Bitcoins. That's about something like 69, 66 $1,000,000,000 worth. And the Kennedy proposal would have it by 4,000,000 Bitcoins. So do the math.
Laura: Yeah. I actually did. And so if you account for the fact that there's about 4,000,000 Bitcoins that appear to be permanently lost, then, yeah, that brings, and obviously not all of them have have been mined. So that would bring the percentage then that the US government owns of the Bitcoin supply to 25% for RFK's proposal.
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.