Bitcoin Is America’s New Gold In The Trump Era: Howard Lutnick

The first hundred days of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House have produced a string of Bitcoin-centric policy moves, capped by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s forceful comparison of the asset to “gold” and his declaration that it now enjoys unequivocal federal backing. In a conversation with Bitcoin Magazine’s Frank Corva inside the Executive Office Building, Lutnick sketched an administration that views BTC not as a speculative novelty but as a strategic commodity woven into America’s trade, energy and investment agenda.

Lutnick opened with a stinging retrospective on the previous regulatory climate: “Bitcoin was treated under the Biden administration like you were doing something wrong. There was this feeling that if you even talked about it you had to look over your shoulder. Now you have that in the rear-view mirror and it’ll never come back.”

He then cast President Trump as “the number one pro-Bitcoin voice in government,” flanked by “Crypto Czar David Sacks and myself.” Together, he said, the trio “were able to help the President deliver on his promise and deliver that Bitcoin strategic reserve” within mere weeks of inauguration—a speed he called “the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen in government.”

Pressed for details of the federal Bitcoin audit, Lutnick declined to reveal balances or custody architecture, explaining, “When the administration wants to come out with those answers, we’ll come out with them, but unfortunately I’m not at liberty to do that right now.”

Bitcoin Is The New Gold

What he did offer was a conceptual blueprint. Bitcoin, he insisted, is a commodity: “There’s only so much of it—21 million. Nobody can ‘fix’ the software; nobody can dilute it. That rarity is its value,” he said. “Once the United States of America embraces something, you’ve never seen the United States of America turn its back on it later.”

That commodity framing is already rippling through the Commerce Department. Lutnick revealed that the Bureau of Economic Analysis is studying whether Bitcoin reserves should appear alongside bullion in the nation’s international investment position and perhaps even influence trade-balance calculations. “I think it’s a really good idea,” he said, before segueing into broader statistical reforms designed to separate actual production from “government spending that is not purchasing goods and services.”

The Secretary’s enthusiasm peaked when he detailed the new Investment Accelerator, a Commerce-run concierge desk for capital projects above $1 billion: “If it’s ten billion or more, let’s assign someone for white-glove service—literally a full-time person you can call anytime, all the time,” Lutnick said. “And if you want to mine Bitcoin and you find the right place to do it, you can build your own power plant next to it.”

His vision marries stranded hydro assets and flare-gas sites to an on-shoring push he believes will “turbocharge Bitcoin mining in America.” Off-grid generation, he argued, neutralizes complaints that miners crowd out household electricity demand while locking in some of the world’s lowest marginal costs. “You’re going to see data centers on top of gas fields,” he predicted, “so they won’t be beholden to the grid—and that is going to create a boom.”

What of Bitcoin’s vaunted decentralization? Does clustering hash power on US soil endanger censorship resistance? Lutnick was blunt: “America is the most extraordinary business place on the earth. What’s the Plan B of America?” he asked, adding that the regulatory clarity now offered would have miners everywhere “nodding their heads in agreement.”

He acknowledged that, for the moment, Bitcoin must share the West Wing’s bandwidth with a sweeping trade-realignment package and an aggressive peace initiative. Yet he stressed that the strategic reserve and the Investment Accelerator already satisfy candidate-Trump’s two explicit crypto promises. “After he sets those big two agenda items,” Lutnick said, “I think we’ll start to talk a little bit more about Bitcoin.”

Until then, the Secretary’s message remains clear: Bitcoin is gold, America intends to mine it, and federal policy is being rewritten to ensure the mother lode stays onshore.

At press time, BTC traded at $94,350.