Polymarket traders have all but written off the possibility that the Donald Trump administration’s proposed federal cryptocurrency reserve will be operational this year, marking a dramatic reversal from the optimism seen at the start of 2025.
Expectations surged in early March after the White House issued an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin reserve and a broader digital asset stockpile.
The directive called for federal agencies to pool Bitcoin and other seized digital assets into a unified reserve and barred the government from liquidating Bitcoin earmarked for that purpose.
Days later, President Trump suggested the reserve could eventually expand to include Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano, comments that briefly fueled retail speculation that the U.S. was preparing a long-term crypto accumulation strategy.
But the order never established authority to buy assets, allocated no federal funding, and did not outline custody, reporting, or regulatory mechanisms needed to build or manage such a reserve.
Instead, it relied entirely on seized holdings and undefined “budget-neutral” measures, leaving analysts skeptical that a national crypto reserve could ever function in practice.
Market Reaction Turns Skeptical
Researchers and policy analysts quickly questioned whether a sovereign crypto reserve could be viable without congressional backing, standardized accounting rules, or a clear operational framework.
Some warned that centralizing large amounts of digital assets could introduce new political and systemic risks.
Tokens named in the administration’s early comments, including XRP, ADA and SOL, saw brief bumps before retreating as doubts grew.
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Despite the lack of progress, the executive order remains in effect; no replacement directive has been issued and no official cancellation has been announced. On paper, the reserve still exists, but with no visible steps toward implementation.
Prediction Markets Mark Down Expectations
This gap between policy language and execution has driven prediction markets to reassess the initiative with stark finality.
Polymarket contracts tied to a functioning U.S. Bitcoin reserve by the end of the year traded above 60% in February and March. By December, that figure had slipped to 2%.
Markets tied to an XRP reserve followed an even steeper fall, sliding from above 20% in March to 1% by year-end.
Ethereum-linked markets moved from roughly 30–40% in early spring to 1% in December.
Across all of these markets, traders are effectively concluding that the U.S. will not establish a meaningful crypto reserve this year, meaning no real accumulation program, no public balance sheet, and no institutional infrastructure to manage one.
For now, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve sits as a declared policy goal without the tools or pathways required to make it real.
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