Could the Trump administration be preparing to use the United States' gold bullion reserves to fund their proposed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?

Bo Hines, the Executive Director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets, suggested in a recent interview that revaluing government gold was one of the proposals on the table.

"We view Bitcoin as being digital gold," Hines told Coindesk's Christine Lee at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit in New York City. "That's why we set up the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the way that we did. It has intrinsic stored value that's traditionally accepted, and we feel like it's in the best interest of Americans to hold on to this asset long-term and accumulate as much as we can get."

"That's why we've likened this to digital gold and talked about building the digital Fort Knox for the United States," he added.

And the Trump administration appears to be considering the contents of the original Fort Knox to fund the digital one.

Edmund Moy served as the 38th Director of the United States Mint from 2006 to 2011. Appointed during the second term of Republican President George W. Bush, he continued in his role through most of the first term of Democratic President Barack Obama, a bipartisan tenure which is not always the case for Mint directors.

"Congress, under the gold standard, set the value of gold through law," Moy told Kitco News. "When Nixon took us off the gold standard and prevented convertibility in 1972, the law at the time said that the value of gold was $42.22. So that is the statutory value, the book value, of that gold on the United States' books. Congress has not changed that value of gold and said, 'It's market value.'"

And Moy doesn't believe the U.S. government will ever revalue it, only to turn around and spend the added value on something else. "We want to keep all the gold that we have as an asset," he said.

Philip Diehl was appointed director of the United States Mint in 1994 and served through to the end of Bill Clinton's presidency in 2000. During his term, the Mint increased the profits it returned to taxpayers from $727 million to $2.6 billion. Diehl also coauthored the law authorizing the Mint to produce the American Platinum Eagle bullion coin, the nation's first platinum coin.

Diehl told Kitco News that he's not convinced the gold certificates scheme between Treasury and the Federal Reserve would actually result in new money, even on paper.

"I don't understand how they see that mechanism," Diehl said. "Now, the reality is that it's entirely possible in the last 25 years since I left the Treasury Department, that the law has changed on how that would occur. But from the time when I was there, I just don't see how it's anything other than an accounting change on the books."

Still, Diehl acknowledged that President Trump will likely get what he wants from the agencies and departments he controls, but that still leaves the coequal branch of Congress to contend with.

"I'm highly skeptical that Senator Lummis' legislation could pass," he said. "Number one, it has no momentum from its filing in 2023. She ended up getting five or six co-sponsors last year, and I think she has the same five co-sponsors this year."

To read the complete article, see:
Will Trump use U.S. gold reserves to buy Bitcoin? Former Mint Directors Diehl and Moy say it's a lousy trade(https://www.gold-eagle.com/will-trump-use-us-gold-reserves-buy-bitcoin-former-mint-directors-diehl-and-moy-say-it%E2%80%99s-lousy-trade)