Government-Controlled Crypto Reserves Threaten Decentralization

• Solana co-founder raises concerns about how a government-controlled reserve could undermine decentralization and the original plan of the ecosystem. 
• He suggests that States should run their own crypto reserves, and if possible, the inclusions should be based on objective measurable requirements. 

In a recent update, we reported the confirmation list of assets that could be included in the US crypto reserve. According to that post, US President Donald Trump has directed the presidential working group through an executive order to move forward with XRP, Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH), and Bitcoin. However, this has generated mixed reactions within the crypto environment.

The latest to comment on this initiative is Solana Labs’ co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. According to him, the US crypto reserve is not necessary as the involvement of a government diminishes the decentralized nature of the assets.

My reserve order of preference

1. No reserve, because if you want decentralization to fail you’d put the government in charge of it.

2. Or states run their own reserve as a hedge against the fed making a mistake

3. Or if there has to be a reserve, it’s based on objectively… https://t.co/LfYXCIeRnG

— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) March 6, 2025

Meanwhile, Yakovenko admonishes the States to rather run their own reserves. Apart from this, he also advised that the reserve should be based on objective, measurable requirements if there has to be one. According to him, it could be designed to fit only Bitcoin, however, it must be rationally justified.

I don’t care what they are; they can even be constructed such that only Bitcoin satisfies them right now; they just must be objectively measurable and rationally justified. If there is a target to beat, the Solana ecosystem will get it done.

Meanwhile, Ripple boss Brad Garlinghouse has lauded the establishment of the multi-token reserve. As mentioned in our previous news brief, Garlinghouse believes that the crypto industry will achieve its goals once it works together.

Maximalism is the enemy of the industry’s progress. Glad to see POTUS recognizing we live in a multichain world and that we’re finally moving past Bill Hinman and the Biden administration’s SEC’s very broken thinking. I will certainly continue to champion this while in Washington at the end of this week.

The Impact of the Crypto Reserve on the US Economy

Many experts have argued that the crypto reserve could raise more money for the US than levying taxes. In the Bitcoin reserve bill proposed by Cynthia Lummis last year, it was argued that its accompanying gains would allow the country to cut its debts in half in 20 years.

Contrary to this, experts, including professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business Chester Spatt, believe that it is “very risky to rely on assets like Bitcoin for debt reduction.” According to him, the past upsurge of Bitcoin does not guarantee that similar movements could be recorded in the future. He also argued that buying a huge quantity of crypto increases the chance of credit rating agencies downgrading the US and subsequently increasing the rate of borrowing.

If we think our markets are pretty efficient, then we would expect the markets to be forward-looking, and so that would suggest there wouldn’t necessarily be a lot of predictive power from the past.

As outlined in our recent blog post, analysts at investment firm Bernstein Gautam Chhugani, Mahika Sapra, and Sanskar Chindalia have issued concerns about the inclusion of altcoins in the strategic reserve.

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