Bitcoin developer Peter Todd criticizes inclusion of altcoins in Strategic Crypto Reserve

Canadian Bitcoin developer Peter Todd has heavily criticized the concept of strategic cryptocurrency reserve involving other digital assets such as XRP and Solana (SOL).

Todd, who was shortlisted as one of the Satoshi Nakamoto candidates last year by HBO, said that such a move would be “an obvious scam” to favor centralized authorities holding these tokens.

The Bitcoin part of it is just buying digital gold. Not much different than a strategic gold reserve.

The Ripple, Solana, etc. part of it is an obvious scam designed to enrich the centralized parties controlling those coins.

Heck, I was paid by a consortium of banks years years…

— Peter Todd (@peterktodd) March 4, 2025

Todd compared the concept of having only Bitcoins in the reserve to having only gold and stressed its nature of being legitimate. “The Bitcoin part of it is just buying digital gold. Not much different than a strategic gold reserve,” he said.

Todd has been an opponent of XRP for quite some time now. He noted that in 2015, he was hired by a banking consortium to study Ripple and its environment. He has outlined what he considers as centralization problems with the token in the past years.

In 2018, he remarked, “The irony of all this is if Ripple just went out and said that XRP is a centralized system, we’d all have a much harder time criticizing it.”

U.S. to stockpile digital assets

As we reported, U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced plans to build a strategic cryptocurrency reserve and identified five cryptos that may be included. In a post on Truth Social, he noted that Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Solano, and Cardano would be the primary assets in the reserve.

This is in line with an executive order signed in January that required an assessment of a national digital asset reserve. Trump stated. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”

The order directed authorities to set standards for acquiring digital currencies, which might involve the use of unlawfully obtained funds.

This comes against the backdrop of Trump’s first White House Crypto Summit planned for this Friday. The event is led by Hines and chaired by David Sacks of AI & Crypto Czar and will include speakers who are founders, CEOs, and Investors.

Bitwise CEO Hunter Holsley also expressed his concerns regarding the integration of such tokens. The move raised eyebrows even in the pro-crypto community due to the identification of some assets under the control of central entities.

James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, said he was shocked to see that assets other than Bitcoin were included. He further stated that most of these cryptocurrencies are akin to technology investment vehicles but not decentralized currencies. Butterfill said it might have been done out of an all-around positive sentiment towards cryptocurrencies and not because of the inherent value of Bitcoin.

“The announcement suggests a more patriotic stance toward the broader crypto technology space,” Butterfill said.

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