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U.S. government isn’t poised to sweep in with bitcoin buys, despite Jim Cramer rumor

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U.S. government isn't poised to sweep in with bitcoin buys, despite Jim Cramer rumor

President Donald Trump’s U.S. bitcoin reserve doesn’t exist yet, and there is no mechanism in the federal government for the wholesale purchase of crypto.

Keep that in mind when considering this weekend’s speculation about the price point that would cause the White House to push a buy button, thanks in large part to CNBC speculator Jim Cramer. There is no such button.

The president did order a “strategic reserve” established to hold bitcoin, but that didn’t make it spring into existence. The Treasury Department and crypto advisers spent months auditing the federal holdings of crypto (though White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt told CoinDesk last week that they still won’t share a number). But the process hit a snag: The advocates said they still need Congress to establish the stockpile under law.

The crypto sector’s new U.S. law for stablecoin issuers didn’t include it, nor does the sweeping crypto market structure bill currently grinding through the U.S. Senate. Clearing legislation through this Congress — even less controversial matters — is a tall order, and industry lobbyists are currently focused on the bill to finally establish market and oversight regulations for digital assets. A reserve may not even be second on the list of priorities, because crypto tax rules also beckon.

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When Cramer suggested on-air that Trump has a plan, saying, “I heard at 60 he’s going to fill the bitcoin reserve,” the crypto markets took some notice. The struggling asset has recently dropped as low as $62,840 but spent some days hovering just under $70,000, and if the U.S. government stood ready to swoop in at $60,000, that could be a big deal. But the rumor isn’t supported by what’s going on with the federal fund.

For now, Trump’s executive order last year to set up the bitcoin reserve and a separate stockpile of other crypto assets waits to be fulfilled. And his order carefully rejected the idea of the government purchasing crypto with taxpayer money (which disappointed the industry at the time). Instead, he directed his administration to stop selling seized assets, so anything grabbed in civil or criminal cases is now allegedly being set aside for the future reserve.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the weekend speculation. The government’s current bitcoin holding may hover around $23 billion, according to data from Arkham Intelligence on U.S.-associated wallets.

Some ideas have been floated by Trump’s advisers and by lawmakers such as Senator Cynthia Lummis for how the feds could buy bitcoin without tapping taxpayers, but no solutions have yet been chosen. And Lummis’ legislative efforts to enact the reserve haven’t advanced, even as her Senate tenure dwindles after her announcement she’ll retire after this year.

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During Congressional hearings last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked whether the government was in a position to bail out bitcoin, and Bessent said he had no such authority. More specifically, though, he said he can’t order U.S. bankers to start buying up crypto.

For government purchases, the industry may be better off looking toward states at the moment. Several state governments pursued bitcoin reserve authorities last year and have been more nimble than the federal government in setting up pockets of their budgets meant for digital assets.

Read More: Why Doesn’t the U.S. Have a Bitcoin Reserve, Yet?

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Crypto World

Brian Armstrong’s Bold Prediction: AI Agents Will Soon Dominate Global Financial

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Brian Armstrong's Bold Prediction: AI Agents Will Soon Dominate Global Financial

TLDR:

  • Brian Armstrong says AI agents cannot open bank accounts but can hold crypto wallets.
  • Coinbase launched Agentic Wallets via the x402 protocol for fast AI-to-AI payments.
  • Wallets enable gasless trading on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network.
  • Mastercard and crypto firms build solutions to support AI agent commerce.

Brian Armstrong’s AI agents and crypto wallets discussion gained attention after the Coinbase CEO highlighted that autonomous AI programs will soon dominate financial transactions.

Armstrong stated that AI agents cannot open bank accounts, but they can generate crypto wallets and transact globally.

Coinbase Launches Agentic Wallets for Machine Transactions

On March 9, Brian Armstrong posted on X explaining that AI agents will soon outnumber humans in financial activity. He argued that traditional banks cannot serve AI because of the Know Your Customer requirements.

AI agents require payment capabilities to execute assigned tasks autonomously. Without bank accounts, agents cannot pay for services like server hosting or software tools.

Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets on February 11, 2026, via its x402 protocol. The protocol is designed for machine-to-machine payments and has processed over 50 million transactions by the time of Armstrong’s post.

The wallets can be created and funded quickly through Coinbase developer tools. They also allow gasless trading on Base, Coinbase’s layer‑2 network built on Ethereum.

Armstrong emphasized that AI agents can own crypto wallets immediately, bypassing the human identity verification barrier. This capability positions crypto as a natural infrastructure for the coming machine economy.

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Other crypto leaders have shared similar views on AI-driven financial activity. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao predicted that AI agents will produce millions of times more transactions than humans.

Industry Prepares for AI Agent Commerce

Traditional financial companies are developing systems to accommodate agent-driven transactions. Mastercard launched Verifiable Intent, a framework co-developed with Google, to track AI purchases securely.

The system creates a cryptographic record linking the consumer’s authorization, the AI agent’s action, and the transaction. It uses selective disclosure to share only the necessary information with merchants and issuers.

Meanwhile, crypto platforms continue to expand blockchain-based payment rails for AI agents. EigenCloud partnered with Google Cloud to serve as a verifiable backbone for agent transactions.

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The Ethereum Foundation also established the dAI Team to make Ethereum a preferred settlement layer for machine-driven commerce.

These efforts illustrate two approaches: traditional finance builds trust layers, while crypto platforms provide blockchain-native solutions.

Taken together, these developments indicate that AI agents are likely to rely on crypto wallets for autonomous transactions.

Coinbase’s Agentic Wallets and blockchain infrastructure offer immediate solutions for machine-to-machine financial operations.

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BitGo Partners with StableX to Support $100M Crypto Treasury Plan

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Western Union, NYSE

BitGo will provide custody and trading services for StableX Technologies’ digital asset treasury as it plans to acquire up to $100 million in crypto tokens tied to the stablecoin sector.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, BitGo Bank & Trust, N.A. will serve as the custodian for StableX’s digital asset holdings, while BitGo’s trading platforms will help execute the company’s planned acquisitions through its over-the-counter liquidity desk.

StableX (SBLX) is a publicly traded company focused on stablecoin infrastructure and related technologies. Shares of the Nasdaq-listed company gained as much as 9% in afternoon trading following the news, before closing up 1.6%.

Chen Fang, chief revenue officer at BitGo, told Cointelgraph that the “partnership underscores BitGo’s expanding role as the go-to infrastructure provider for a new wave of publicly traded companies building digital asset treasury strategies.” He added:

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“The StableX deal is notable because it goes beyond Bitcoin-centric treasury strategies. It signals demand for institutional custody infrastructure around stablecoin ecosystem tokens.”

StableX has already begun building its digital asset treasury, previously announcing purchases of tokens including FLUID and Chainlink’s LINK (LINK) in October.

BitGo, a digital asset infrastructure company founded in 2013, provides custody, trading and other services for institutional crypto clients. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January, pricing its shares at $18 in its initial public offering.

The stock rose about 25% on its first day of trading before reversing course and later falling below its IPO price. The NYSE-traded shares closed up more than 11%.

Western Union, NYSE
Source: Yahoo Finance

Related: Societe Generale-FORGE launches EURCV stablecoin on Stellar

Investment products target stablecoin infrastructure

Interest in the stablecoin sector has grown as the total stablecoin market capitalization has climbed to more than $314 billion, according to the latest DefiLlama data. Though dedicated investment products remain limited, some investors are beginning to focus on the infrastructure that supports these tokens.

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In September, Bitwise filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a Stablecoin & Tokenization ETF designed to track companies and digital assets tied to the stablecoin and tokenization sectors.

The proposed exchange-traded fund would follow an index composed of companies involved in stablecoin issuance, infrastructure, payments and exchanges, alongside crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

Western Union, NYSE
Stablecoin market cap. Source: DefiLlama

In January, MarketVector Indexes also launched benchmarks focused on stablecoin and real-world asset tokenization infrastructure, which underpin two exchange-traded funds from Amplify ETFs: the Amplify Tokenization Technology ETF (TKNQ) and the Amplify Stablecoin Technology ETF (STBQ).

Several stablecoin issuers are also publicly traded companies. Circle issues the USDC stablecoin, the second-largest dollar-pegged token in circulation, while PayPal launched its PayPal USD stablecoin (PYUSD) in 2023 to support blockchain-based payments and settlement.

Western Union, one of the world’s largest remittance providers, recently announced its planned stablecoin settlement system will run on Solana and include a US Dollar Payment Token (USDPT), which the company expects to launch in the first half of 2026.

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