Michael Saylor, co-founder of MicroStrategy, has a wild idea. He thinks Uncle Sam should be the biggest Bitcoin hodler on the planet.
"The U.S. government should own the majority of the Bitcoin in the world," Saylor declared at Bitcoin 2024 Conference. This would mean over 10.5 million BTC, worth $711 billion at current prices.
It's a bold claim. The feds currently have 208,898 BTC, mostly seized from criminals. That's chump change compared to Saylor's target.
Saylor's not alone in his crypto dreams. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running for president, wants the government to match its gold reserves with Bitcoin. The US has 8,134 metric tons of gold, worth $615 billion.
Why bother? It's about backing the greenback. Saylor likens it to buying Manhattan for peanuts back in the day.
"The future of the country is in cyberspace, and Bitcoin is, in essence, 'cyber Manhattan,'" he said. He reckons it could be worth trillions down the line.
Politics is getting crypto-curious. Donald Trump's talking about protecting Bitcoin miners. Kamala Harris's team is sniffing around, chatting with crypto bigwigs like Mark Cuban.
But it's not all smooth sailing. The Biden administration has been cracking down on crypto firms. Any Bitcoin-backed dollar plan would need a major policy shift.
Bryan Courchesne of DAIM.io thinks it's doable, but tricky. "The Justice Department holds about 200,000 Bitcoin," he told CNBC. "They could easily just move that over to the Department of Treasury."
If the US went all-in on Kennedy's plan, they'd need to buy $154 billion in Bitcoin annually for four years. That's a lot of digital gold.
Saylor's not shy about his Bitcoin predictions. He thinks the market cap will hit $280 trillion by 2024. That's a 200x growth from today. Talk about shooting for the moon.
For now, it's all pie in the sky. But with crypto creeping into mainstream politics, who knows? Maybe Uncle Sam will be stacking sats sooner than we think.