White House crypto czar says public has 'lost out on over $17 billion' in bitcoin value
David Sacks, the White House crypto czar, said Friday that taxpayers have lost out on "over $17 billion of value" because earlier administrations never took advantage of bitcoin already in the U.S. government's possession.
"Over the past decade or so, the federal government has come into the possession of roughly 400,000 bitcoin through civil or criminal asset forfeitures," Sacks said in an interview with ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang on Friday. "We've had this very ad hoc strategy where we just would sell the bitcoin, sort of almost willy-nilly, and we sold about half of it. We only made about $400 million. Today, that bitcoin would have been worth over $17 billion, so the American taxpayer lost out on over $17 billion of value."
Sacks' comments follow President Donald Trump signing an executive order on Thursday that creates a strategic bitcoin reserve and U.S. digital assets stockpile. Senior White House officials said bitcoin is being treated differently from other cryptocurrencies because it is the "original" cryptocurrency and there is a finite amount.
Sacks brushed off repeated questions about whether this could pose a conflict of interest since President Donald Trump has a personal financial stake in the success of the industry after launching his own cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, days before the inauguration.
"It's not an issue," Sacks told Wang.
When asked about Bloomberg News' reporting that World Liberty Financial appears to have bought more than $20 million in cryptocurrency two days before the White House's Digital Assets Summit on Friday, Sacks said: "You should talk to them about that. That's a private company. I'm not a regulator. I'm a policy adviser for innovation. I don't keep tabs on what individual companies are doing."
Sacks stressed that the government is not buying any cryptocurrency, just using the cryptocurrency that has already been accumulated through criminal or civil asset forfeitures.
"Any further accumulation of bitcoin by the government has to be done in a completely budget-neutral way. It cannot add to the deficit, it cannot add to the debt, it cannot tax the American people," Sacks said. "So this is about maximizing the value of assets that we already have on our balance sheet."
When asked by ABC News how the government could "accumulate" more bitcoin in a budget-neutral way, Sacks said those programs don't exist, noting the administration is still in the planning phase and that the executive order calls on the secretaries of the Department of Commerce and the Department of Treasury to "think about that."
"It won't cost the taxpayer dimes, but if the secretaries can figure out how to accumulate more bitcoin without costing taxpayers anything, then they are authorized to do that," the senior White House officials added.
Sacks repeatedly compared bitcoin to U.S. holdings of gold, explaining that the U.S. won't be selling it, unless Trump changes his mind down the road.
"We've got about a trillion dollars of gold in Fort Knox and our other depositories," he said. "We don't sell that gold, even though we could use it to pay off a trillion dollars of national debt. The reason why we don't sell it, liquidate it all today is because we believe it's strategic for the United States to have a stockpile or reserve of that asset.
"In a similar way, we believe it's in the long term interest the United States to hold on to this bitcoin," he added. "Look, if the president changes his mind at some point in the future, he could issue a new executive order and say, the secretary of the treasury, get rid of it, sell it. But we don't want to do that."
White House officials also noted that an official audit of the government's digital asset holdings has never been completed but will be following the president's executive order, allowing the administration to get a more concrete understanding of what the U.S. possesses.
