On March 6, US President Donald Trump ordered the creation of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) and digital asset reserve.
Criminal and civil asset forfeitures have dramatically increased the amount of assets in both funds; The coin prices of those assets are falling rapidly..
Specifically, using Arcam’s estimates and the date 30 days after the Trump executive order as a starting point for calculating returns, many of the largest constituents of the SBR and digital asset stockpiles whose prices have not been flat in USD terms over the period have a median return of -10%.
Unfortunately, the exact dates on which these two funds were officially established are unknown.
Despite requests under President Trump’s executive order, the public still has not received the expected “full accounting of all government digital assets.”
Additionally, there is no U.S. government website itemizing the assets of either fund.
Read more: FOIA reveals federal marshals hold at least $1.6 billion in BTC
Instead, the public is trying to fill in the blanks by crowdsourcing estimates of which assets are owned by the U.S. government. For example, Arkham estimates that it holds $27 billion worth of crypto assets.
Does the US government own 198,012 or 326,588 BTC?
However, there is significant disagreement over which assets should be included. For example, CoinGecko estimates that the U.S. government holds 325,293 Bitcoin (BTC), which is roughly in line with Arkham and Bitcoin Treasuries’ estimate of 326,588.
In contrast, BitBo estimates a much smaller 198,012 BTC.
Few trackers attempt to track altcoins, making it difficult to determine the composition and investment return profile of digital asset stockpiles.
For purposes of illustration, let’s assume that the stockpile includes the four altcoins (ETH, XRP, SOL, and ADA) that were included in President Trump’s original promise, albeit in very confusing terms.
Since April 5th (or 30 days after Trump’s executive order), these assets have returned 49%, -11%, 1.7%, and -39%, respectively.
Therefore, the median return for these four constituents is -4.5%.
The price of BTC itself has been completely flat over the same period, so its unbalanced representation will not distort the results for other assets.
Estimating the median return of top altcoins in the US stockpile
Using a different calculation method, one might speculate that the US stockpile includes the assets on Arkham’s dashboard.
Here are the top assets excluding BTC and USD pegged assets whose prices have been flat since April 5th and their returns since that date:
- Ethereum: 49%
- BNB: 39%
- Uni: 7%
- Link: -8%
- AAVE: 3%
- Sand: -42%
- RNDR: -46%
- Shibu: -36%
- Band: -45%
This gives a median return of -10%.
Depending on assumptions about which altcoins are included in the stockpile, the results could be even more negatively biased.
Despite confusing news in the weeks leading up to the announcement, including temporary and quickly broken promises to add ETH, XRP, SOL, and ADA to the Reserve along with BTC, ultimately only BTC was added to the Strategic Reserve.
