GetBlock Magazine - What happened? Independent US presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. said that if elected he would push for the federal government to buy $615 billion worth of Bitcoin, which is equal in value to the country's gold reserves. The US government is the world's largest owner of gold (8,134 tons).
Interview on Scott Melker's channel
What else is known? To obtain BTC reserves of similar value, the US authorities would need to buy 9.4 million coins or 45% of the total supply, which is programmatically limited to 21 million bitcoins. To date, miners have mined over 19.73 million coins and are in circulation.
The pace of reaching the limit of 21 million coins is gradually slowing down due to the built-in halving mechanism: this event occurs once every four years and halves the reward of miners for mining blocks. At the moment, the last, fourth halving took place on April 20 of this year and reduced the reward to 3,125 BTC.
According to Bitcoin Luxor Mining estimates, taking into account halvings, the last Bitcoin will be mined around 2140.
Such a massive purchase of Bitcoin would be consistent with Kennedy's previously announced plans to support the dollar and government debt with a basket that would include hard currencies, as well as precious metals and BTC. According to the policymaker, the new class of Treasuries could be pegged to this basket by 1% in the first year of the initiative's launch, with a gradual increase to 100%.
Kennedy plans that during his tenure as president, the government will purchase the required volume of coins. If this happens, the US will become the largest holder of the first cryptocurrency. By comparison, analytics software developer MicroStrategy, which is the largest BTC holder among public companies, holds 226,331 BTC worth $14.41 billion. And the world's largest investment company BlackRock manages 334,000 BTC worth $21.73 billion.
Considering that the BTC rate shows significant growth over the long term, the US authorities may need less than 9.4 million coins to accumulate a reserve of $615 billion. Despite this, if the initiative is implemented, the country will still become one of the largest holders of the asset in the world.
During an interview with blogger Scott Melker, Kennedy called Bitcoin a fair, transparent and decentralized currency necessary for democracy:
“If we want to save our democracy, we need decentralization. Bitcoin is fair because no one controls it.”
Over the past year and a half, the politician has been actively speaking out in support of Bitcoin, calling it a guarantee of civil liberties. He also actively opposes the release of a national cryptocurrency: according to the politician, this will “lead the country to financial slavery and political tyranny,” since the central bank will have the ability to track transactions and control how the digital dollar is used.
Last July, Kennedy, if elected, promised to eliminate capital gains taxes on BTC, which would encourage the crypto industry to remain in the United States, and also reported on his own investments in the asset.
