Should Ripple’s XRP Be Part of the US Digital Asset Reserve? Community Debates

President Donald Trump splashed the crypto waters earlier this week when he signed an executive order focused on digital assets to be potentially included in the US reserves.

Although it’s not officially approved yet, the decision has sparked substantial debates within the community on which cryptocurrencies should be included or whether it should just be bitcoin.

The Debate

Ever since Trump changed his tune on the crypto industry last year and made dozens of optimistic promises during his election campaign, the talk of the town has been whether he will stay true to his word and establish a US BTC reserve.

The first portion of that plan would be for the US government to stop selling the seized BTC from illegal operations. However, Trump went further on Thursday by signing an executive order titled ‘Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technologies’ to explore the inclusion of various cryptocurrencies into the US reserve.

This sent shockwaves throughout the community, especially those favoring many US-based projects and their underlying assets, such as SOL, XRP, and ADA. Many believe that companies like Ripple are actually working against BTC in this manner by ‘throwing around millions at politicians, desperately trying to derail it.’

Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, refuted the accusations, saying their efforts ‘are actually increasing the likelihood of a crypto strategic reserve (which includes bitcoin) happening.’

Unless you are choosing to ignore the core tenants of the POTUS campaign (which aggressively supports American companies and technologies), our efforts are actually INCREASING the likelihood of a crypto strategic reserve (which includes bitcoin) happening.

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 23, 2025

No XRP, Please

Messari’s founder, Ryan Selkis, joined the anti-XRP front, indicating that the Ripple incentive is ‘toxic.’ He went further, described the project’s native token as a ‘piece of s**t,’ and said it would be better to have no crypto strategic reserve than to put XRP in it. Selkis concluded that BTC is the only exception and that it makes sense to be the sole crypto rep in that reserve.

America-First is not “American-Shitcoin First”

We’d be better off having no strategic reserve than one with a “endorsed” pieces of shit like XRP.

Still, I think Bitcoin is an exception.

1. Build different (with energy)2. Lindy, mcap dominance, no insiders3. Global traction https://t.co/eCNhKjpgSL

— Ryan Selkis (d/acc) (@twobitidiot) January 23, 2025

In contrast, Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson, who has been collaborating with the Ripple team for a while now, said there’s no need to ‘base XRP’ and claimed that the strategic reserve will start as bitcoin-only.