Original title: “Strategic Reserves and Game of Thrones: The Crypto Order in the Trump Era”

Author: Zeke, YBB Capital Researcher

preface

For President Trump, the world is a huge “The Apprentice” reality show. Less than a month after taking office, many people, from internal agency employees to foreign leaders, have received dismissal letters from Trump that read “You’re fired”. How can Crypto successfully advance as a key guest in the remaining four years of the show? I think we might need to start by getting to know the boss.

1. The market likes surprises, but I must control the pace.

In Trump’s autobiography “The Art of Trading”,”controlling the rhythm” and “creating surprises” form the core pillars of his negotiation philosophy. The intertwining of these two strategies not only created his early business empire, but also set the tone for his later political game.

●“Control the rhythm”:The original sentence in the book: “In trading, you must dominate the rhythm. If you let your opponent control the time, you have already lost half the game.”（「In a deal, you have to set the pace. If you let the other side dictate the timing, you』ve already lost half the battle.」）

●“Creating an accident”:The original sentence in the book: “Accidents are the decisive factor. When your opponent thinks you’re compromised, pounce on new demands-this will break them down.”（「The element of surprise is crucial. When they think you』ve given in, hit them with a new demand-it throws them off balance.」）

Looking back at the classic negotiation cases of Trump’s early years in business, Trump has shown absolute control over the pace of negotiations since the Grand Hyatt New York project in 1976. When the city government asked him to bear the cost of renovating a subway station, he threatened to withdraw from negotiations to create a sense of urgency-suddenly announcing a shutdown three days before the municipal budget deadline, forcing the New York City Council to urgently pass a tax relief plan and ultimately increasing government subsidies from $40 million. Increase to $120 million.

In the 1983 Trump Tower project, he took the delaying tactics to the extreme: when the project progress reached 90%, he suddenly sued the contractor for construction delays, and took advantage of the other party’s eagerness to settle the final payment to successfully reduce the project payment by 23%.

The 1985 Atlantic City casino acquisition was his peak interpretation of the “raid strategy.” After eight months of negotiations, when the seller Platt Hotels Group was ready for the signing ceremony, Trump threw out a new request for $300 million in debt in the last 48 hours. This seemingly crazy move was actually accurate: he knew that the other party had invested US$2 million in legal fees, and that the bankruptcy of the project would lead to collective debt recovery by banks. In the end, the seller was forced to accept the terms, and Trump completed the acquisition at a cost 40% below the market price.

This “sunk cost extortion” later became its signature negotiating style, as “The Art of Trading” stated: “When the opponent thinks victory is in hand, it is the best time to deliver a fatal blow.” This extremely oppressive negotiation strategy is not only the “rule of trading” he advocates, but also his controversial “destructive survival technique.”

Let’s bring the timeline back to the past few days. On February 28, Zelensky and Trump held a globally live bilateral meeting between the United States and Ukraine at the White House. During this meeting, Trump still carried out with his usual tactics. The first was to reach a four-point consensus with Russia on the eve of the meeting. The most critical point was that the two sides agreed to lay the foundation for future cooperation on issues of common geopolitical interests and economic and investment opportunities. These cooperation will emerge with the end of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The second is to issue a sky-high order demanding a repayment of US$500 billion. During the talks, this request was changed to that Ukraine inject 50% of the future income of strategic resources such as rare earths, lithium, and graphite into the US-led “reconstruction fund.”

The live broadcast of the entire meeting stunned the world audience. In the end, Trump even asked Zelensky to leave directly, causing the negotiations to break down. The tariff stick waved abroad also encountered reciprocal counterattacks. President Trump clearly didn’t have a happy weekend.

From the above cases, we can get a more specific summary of Trump’s trading rules:

1. Propose goals that are far higher than expected and force opponents to accept sub-optimal conditions;

2. Use all means to put pressure on opponents to maximize benefits;

3. capricious, making opponents unable to understand;

4. The communication power of customary media will infinitely amplify the incident.

Judging from the counterattack of many countries, the way to counter this strategy seems to be very simple:That is, refusing to trade and refusing to negotiate.

2. Strategic reserves

On Sunday after the bilateral talks between the United States and Ukraine ended, Trump posted two more tweets on his social media Truth Social. XRP, SOL and ADA will be included in the “crypto strategic reserve”, with ETH and BTC still the core. After the news was released, the market received a wave of bullish returns. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin rose 9% to US$93969, Ethereum rose 13% to US$2516, Solana soared 24% to US$174.64, Cardano surged 70% to US$1.11, XRP rose 34% to US$2.93.

The reaction in the circle to these two fire-fighting tweets is very different from the previous support attitude. The most critical trigger is the appearance of a suspected rat warehouse user on Hyperliquid at a coincidental point and used millions of dollars to overdo BTC & ETH by 50 times. According to social media analysis, the user chose to bill on DEX to prevent centralized exchanges from obtaining their KYC information. There are many related conspiracy theories, such as the release on Sunday is to increase shipments on organizational weekdays, and the use of the coin circle as a cash machine for shipments through multiple channels.

Trump’s surprise announcement of a basket of cryptocurrency reserves is still in line with his usual style of doing things, but the true purpose is difficult to figure out, and these speculations may not be big enough for his current appetite.

Combined with the “trading rules” above, I personally speculate that some possible purposes include:

1. Although a lot has been said about cryptocurrency reserves, it is actually just to get the United States to accept a sub-optimal situation, that is, to at least ensure that BTC strategic reserves become a reality. This will attract more mainstream countries to buy BTC, and the United States still has the leading power;

2. Trump has more than just greater influence after being elected president. With his power, he can also continue to build “strategic reserve” expectations, just like ETF expectations in the past, thereby continuously controlling the trend of the market;

3. Trump needs to constantly strive for influence and rights for this family that has turned from real estate to encryption. He is entering encryption from all possible angles;

4. There is obviously a more complex network of interests hidden behind the “strict election of the White House”;

5. Currently, there is an obvious lack of funding sources to buy crypto strategic reserves. Trump is using his usual public opinion support to force seized cryptocurrencies into strategic reserves, or requesting the issuance of relevant bonds;

6. The basic concept of strategic reserves refers to the materials, energy, financial and other resources stored in a planned manner by the country in peacetime. The biggest question about cryptocurrencies becoming strategic reserves is that they have no intrinsic use, even if BTC can be compared to gold. So the strategic reserve for launching other counterfeit public chain tokens still lacks support. Trump may already have plans to promote the large-scale adoption of several public chains in various fields. Public chain tokens serve as the “oil” on the access chain. Naturally, it can also be regarded as a “material reserve.”

3. Destructive survival

Trump’s decision-making style and personality traits were deeply influenced by his father, Fred Trump. His father defined interpersonal relationships as a “zero-sum game” through high-pressure education. This growth environment shaped Trump’s competitive mentality of “turning enemies” into opponents. Whether it is his confrontation cases in the business and diplomatic fields, or the incident of inciting supporters to storm Capitol Hill after his defeat in 2020, it clearly highlights his survival principle centered on attack, destruction and suppression.

Individual investors in the currency circle often shout long live the “Crypto President” because of their alliance of interests, but what needs to be cautious is that we may not be on the same front as the Crypto President. The concepts of America first and family first will still be implemented in his Crypto World. Although it is unclear how Trump will react to non-American and non-family projects, it is clear that he is using a tariff war to ensure “America First” and “Family First” in the world on the chain.

1. U.S. projects give priority to ETFs and strategic reserves;

2. U.S. projects may enjoy zero capital gains tax in the future, so on the contrary, taxes may be increased on projects he does not like;

3. The “privileges” of family projects, such as supervision sandboxes and targeted blood transfusions.

The above three points are obvious trends at the moment. In my opinion, Trump may still have a way to suppress the output of non-American mining pools, so as to ensure that every remaining BTC is printed with “Made in USA” as much as possible. By connecting the regulatory interface to the protocol layer, projects that meet American standards will prosper on the chain. There is still a lot that can be carried out in the next four years. The Americanization of encryption has inevitably entered a stage of breaking its shell. In this overt conspiracy, we either choose to ally or “refuse to deal.”

4. The shadow of DOGE

Trump’s friend Elon Musk once pushed Dogcoin, originally born to satirize Bitcoin, to a dual “moon” in market value and physical sense during the 2021 cryptocurrency bull market. This jokecoin, which originated from online memes, was originally developed by engineers Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer in 2013 to ridicule the crazy speculation in the cryptocurrency market at the time. Its code took only 3 hours to complete, adopted an unlimited additional issuance mechanism, and even dubbed mining “digging holes”, completely subverting the narrative of Bitcoin’s scarcity.

However, Musk gave new life to this ancient Meme through social media. He has regarded himself as the “father of dogcoin” since 2019, igniting market enthusiasm with slogans such as “landing on the moon” and “people’s currency”. In 2025, he also named SpaceX’s lunar satellite launch mission DOGE-1, becoming the first space project paid for entirely by dogcoin. This carnival pushed Dogecoin to surge by more than 7000% in 2021, with its market value exceeding US$85 billion at one point, surpassing traditional giants such as General Motors, and completing a counterattack from a satirical tool to the world’s top ten crypto assets with market value.

The greatest sorrow in the world is that you have become the person you hate the most. The crypto world is repeating the fate of its opponents. Bitcoin, once serving as the “sharp blade of confrontation centralization”, has now become a new carrier of American hegemony-the flow of funds follows Trump’s tweet baton, from BTC to Trump, Melania to these so-called copycat strategic reserves, the baton points to the future of encryption, and the activity of encryption has been lost. When the rebels became part of the establishment, encryption ultimately failed to escape the closed loop of the narrative of “the dragon slaying boy eventually became the dragon.”

5. Double-edged sword

From the perspective of self-interest, Trump is indeed a legend in American political and business history. I also believe that BTC will accompany him to the moon. But what innovation can encryption achieve under power interference and high supervision? I used to be angry about the shanzhai, but now I also regret their misfortune.

The game of attention and power is flooding the chain, just as Vitalik responded to Ethereum OG on X:

When I hear people from crypto Twitter and venture capital institutions preach that “PvP with a user loss rate of more than 99%, KOL Gambler Casino is the best product in the crypto field that matches the market” and add that “longing for something better is condescending elitism”?

This situation may get worse in the future. PvP is just a microcosm. The so-called best projects in the next four years may only appear in President Trump’s tweets. The encryption advocated by Trump has always been a double-edged sword. Encryption may eventually be divided into traditional and American circles. In the past, public chain wars will also be carried out in larger units. Under Trump’s strong strategy and huge influence, this war may be very fierce, but the rebirth of encryption will surely experience this disaster.

This article is from a submission and does not represent the views of BlockBeats.