LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) CEO Fred Thiel has an concept for the way U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration could make good on its guarantees to construct out a strategic bitcoin reserve: begin mining.
Talking on a panel at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Thiel mentioned that the U.S. authorities has many potential methods to generate bitcoin to fill the strategic bitcoin reserve that might adhere to the “budget-neutral” acquisition technique specified by Trump’s March govt order, together with utilizing extra hydroenergy to mine bitcoin domestically.
Although it’s been almost three months since Trump approved the institution of a strategic bitcoin reserve, it stays unclear precisely how — and when — the federal government will take steps to truly start filling it, a supply of evident frustration amongst numerous audio system on the convention.
“I believe it’s crucial,” Thiel mentioned of buying bitcoin for the reserve. “The U.S. making a press release that we’re going to have a strategic reserve is an empty assertion except you begin placing stuff into it.”
At this level, the reserve is meant to carry the entire bitcoin that has been sized by the federal government in civil and prison forfeitures — estimated to be roughly 200,000 bitcoins. However many within the business and authorities, together with Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), assume that getting the federal government’s current stockpile of bitcoin right into a strategic reserve is merely a primary step, to be adopted by greater, extra significant acquisitions.
In March, Lummis re-introduced laws — the so-called BITCOIN Act of 2025 — geared toward codifying Trump’s plans for a strategic bitcoin reserve. Below Lummis’ plan, after getting the entire forfeited bitcoin into the reserve, the U.S. authorities would spend the subsequent two to 5 years changing a portion of its gold certificates into bitcoin.
“We’ve got sufficient property in below performing property that we will get 5 p.c of the world’s bitcoin with out spending a single dime,” Lummis mentioned.
Nevertheless, Lummis acknowledged that it’s unlikely that any actual motion on the BITCOIN Act — or, extra broadly, taking any vital steps to fill the strategic reserve with something apart from forfeited property — will come earlier than Congress works its approach by way of stablecoin and market construction laws.
“It’s going to be a heavier elevate than I believed as a result of so many individuals don’t perceive bitcoin,” Lummis mentioned.
