Yesterday, the executive director of Donald Trump’s digital asset advisory board, Bo Hines, stated his intention to fund the creation of a strategic crypto reserve with part of the tariffs collected on imports.
He said it during an interview with Anthony Pompliano aptly titled “America Is Going ALL-IN On Bitcoin“.
The interview: will there be the crypto reserve funded by Trump’s tariffs?
The interview of Pompliano with Hines lasted more than an hour and covered various topics, from the strategic reserve in Bitcoin to Trump’s view on digital assets, including the new US regulation on stablecoins, the implementation of blockchain technology within the current banking system, and institutional adoption.
One of the topics discussed was precisely the one related to Trump’s tariffs, especially in relation to Bitcoin and gold.
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The key to understanding Bo Hines‘ idea is the accumulation strategy of BTC by the USA. Hines indeed argues that the United States should accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible, similar to how one does with gold or other assets with intrinsic value.
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All this would fall under Trump’s plan to make the country a superpower in the crypto field, and in what would foresee the acquisition of BTC with balance-neutral methods, that is, without costs for taxpayers.
Can Trump’s tariffs really fund a strategic crypto reserve in the USA?
To tell the truth, the ultimate payers of Trump’s tariffs are actually the U.S. consumers, so using the tariff revenues to buy Bitcoin would effectively mean making American citizens pay for the purchases.
However, on the other hand, those dazi, once applied, still generate some entrate, and therefore once those funds are collected, the State could use them as it sees fit.
It should be noted, however, that the idea of using the proceeds from tariffs to purchase BTC is considered a creative solution, such as re-evaluating the gold certificates by referring to the Bitcoin Act of 2025.
In other words, the Trump working group on digital assets is evaluating various ideas to finance the purchase of Bitcoin, and since for now it is only evaluating them, all ideas can be considered, even the most outlandish ones.
Since the USA tariffs will ultimately be paid by American citizens, using part of the proceeds to buy BTC is unlikely to gain much popular support.
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The other points
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Hines during the interview said, however, many other much more interesting things.
For example, he stated that one of the objectives of the Trump administration is to remove the obstacles for digital asset companies interacting with traditional financial institutions, and this could indeed change the scenario in the USA.
Furthermore, it states that foreign operators in the Web3 sector should be encouraged to bring their technology to the United States, always with the aim of becoming global leaders in the field of technological innovation.
In this regard, Hines points out how quickly this administration is already acting, so much so that the new stablecoin regulations are already in a very advanced stage: the goal is to have both the stablecoin legislation and the market structure on President Trump‘s desk by August.
Bitcoin as digital gold
Hines at a certain point suggests to American citizens to consider Bitcoin as digital gold.
The best key to understanding his reasoning is precisely this one.
In other terms, it suggests an accumulation strategy, somewhat like the one that has been in place for months on gold.
It should not be forgotten that shortly after mid-December, a long phase of increase in the price of gold began, which is still ongoing, due to a constant increase in demand.
On the other hand, in difficult times, people turn to gold as a safe haven asset of last resort, especially at a time when the dollar and U.S. government bonds are not able to offer comparable guarantees.
So on one side there is a sort of small flight from the dollar, and in recent weeks also from Treasury, while on the other side there has been a rush to gold for months.
The idea of Hines is that something similar should be done with Bitcoin, while the markets see it differently. BTC indeed cannot yet be considered a risk-off asset like gold, if only for the fact that gold is a physical commodity with its own commercial market value, while Bitcoin is just a digital currency whose value is determined solely by the supply/demand ratio.
In other words, if there will always be a demand for gold, as it is a physical good used by many production sectors, the same cannot be said at all for BTC.
All this leads to the assumption that the statements of Bo Hines are primarily of a propagandistic nature, rather than of a technical or analytical nature.