Strategic Reserves and Game of Thrones: The Encrypted Order in the Trump Age

Author: YBB Capital Researcher Zeke

Preface

For President Trump, the world is a huge "Apprentice" reality show. Less than a month after taking office, many people from internal agency employees to foreign leaders have received a dismissal letter from Trump with the words "You're fired." How could Crypto successfully advance as a key guest in the program with the remaining four years? I think we might have to start by getting to know this boss.

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

In Trump's autobiography "The Art of Transaction", "controlling the rhythm" and "creating accidents" constitute the core pillars of his negotiation philosophy. The interweaving application of these two strategies not only created his early business empire, but also laid 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 the opponent control the time, you have 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." )

• "Making an accident" : The original sentence in the book: "Accidents are the decisive element. When the opponent thinks you compromise, attack new requirements - this will disintegrate their position." ( "The element of surprise is cruel. 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 business years, since the Grand Hyatt Hotel New York in 1976, Trump has shown absolute control over the pace of negotiations. When the city government asked it to bear the cost of the subway station reconstruction, he created a sense of urgency by using the withdrawal negotiations as a threat - a sudden announcement of a shutdown three days before the municipal budget deadline forced the New York City Council to urgently pass a tax relief package, ultimately increasing government subsidies from $40 million to $120 million. In the Trump Building project in 1983, he even put the delay tactic 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, and successfully reduced the project payment by 23%.

The 1985 Atlantic City Casino acquisition was his pinnacle of the "raid strategy". After eight months of negotiations, when seller Pratt Hotel Group was ready for the signing ceremony, Trump threw out new demands for $300 million in debt in the last 48 hours. This seemingly crazy move is actually accurate: he knows that the other party has invested $2 million in legal fees, and that the bankruptcy of the project will lead to collective debt collection by banks. In the end, the seller was forced to accept the terms, and Trump completed the acquisition at a cost of 40% below the market price. This "sunken cost ransomware" later became its iconic negotiating style, as the Art of Transaction stated: "When the opponent thinks he is sure to win, it is the best time to exert a fatal blow." This extremely oppressive negotiation strategy is not only the "trading rule" he advocates, but also his controversial "destructive survival technique".

Let's pull the timeline back to the recent, on February 28, Zelensky and Trump held a global live bilateral talks between the United States and Ukraine at the White House. In this talk, Trump still carried out the talks with his usual strategies. First, he reached a four-point consensus with Russia's lightning breaking on the eve of the talks. The most critical point is that the two sides agreed to lay the foundation for future cooperation on issues of common geopolitical interests and economic and investment opportunities. These cooperations will emerge as the end of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. The second is to issue a sky-high order to request a repayment of US$500 billion. At the talks, this requirement was changed to Ukraine injecting 50% of the future returns of strategic resources such as rare earths, lithium, graphite into the "reconstruction fund" led by the US. The live broadcast of the entire meeting struck the world's audience, and in the end, Trump even asked Zelensky to leave directly, resulting in the breakdown of the negotiations. The tariff sticks waving to the outside world also encountered counterattacks against each other. President Trump obviously didn't have a happy weekend.

From the above cases, we can get a more specific summary of Trump's trading rules: 1. Put forward goals that are far higher than expected and force opponents to accept suboptimal conditions; 2. Use all methods that can put pressure on opponents to maximize interests; 3. Capricious, making opponents unable to understand; 4. The communication power of the usual media will infinitely amplify the events.

Judging from the counterattacks from multiple countries, the way to counter this strategy seems to be very simple: that is, reject transactions and refuse negotiations.

2. Strategic reserves

Last Sunday after the bilateral talks between the United States and Ukraine, Trump posted two tweets on his social media Truth Social. XRP, SOL and ADA will be included in the "crypto strategic reserve", and ETH and BTC are still the core. After the news was released, the market ushered in a wave of bullish recovery. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin once rose 9% to $93,969, Ethereum rose 13% to $2,516, Solana soared 24% to $174.64, Cardano soared 70% to $1.11, and XRP rose 34% to $2.93. The response to these two fire-fighting tweets in the circle is very different from the previous support attitudes. The most critical fuse is that a user suspected of having a rat trading appeared on Hyperliquid at a coincidence point, using millions of dollars to make a long BTC & ETH. According to social media analysis, the user chose to place an order on DEX to avoid centralized exchanges obtaining its KYC information. There are many related conspiracy theories, such as the release of Sunday is to increase shipments for institutions on weekdays, and the use of currency circles as cash machines through various channels, etc.

Trump raided and announced that a basket of cryptocurrencies still fits his usual style of conduct, but the real purpose is difficult to figure out. With his current appetite, these speculations may not be big enough. Based on the "trading rules" mentioned above, I personally speculate that some possible purposes are:

1. Although there are many cryptocurrency reserves, they are actually just to make the United States accept the suboptimal 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 will still have the dominance;

2. Trump has more than just greater influence after being elected president. Cooperating with his rights, he can continue to build momentum for "strategic reserves" expectations, just like the expectations of past ETFs, thereby continuously controlling the market trend;

3. Trump needs to constantly strive for influence and rights for this family that has shifted from real estate to encryption, and he is cutting into encryption from all possible perspectives;

4. Behind the "White House's strict election" is obviously a more complex interest network;

5. There is currently a clear lack of funds for buying strategic cryptocurrencies. Trump is forcing the seized cryptocurrencies into strategic reserves through usual public opinion support, or requiring the issuance of related bonds;

6. The basic concept of strategic reserve refers to the resources such as materials, energy, and financial resources stored in a planned manner by the country during peacetime. The biggest question that cryptocurrencies become strategic reserves is that they have no intrinsic uses, even if BTC can be compared to gold. Then the strategic reserves for launching other counterfeit public chain tokens still lack support. Trump may have plans to promote the large-scale adoption of several public chains in various fields. Public chain tokens as "oil" on the access chain can naturally be regarded as "material reserves."

3. Destructive survival

Trump's decision-making style and personality traits are deeply influenced by his father, Fred Trump. His father defined interpersonal relationships as "zero-sum game" through high-pressure education, and this growth environment has shaped Trump's competitive mentality of "enemies" in his opponents. Whether it is his confrontation in the business and diplomacy, or the incident of inciting supporters to attack Capitol Hill after the 2020 election defeat, it clearly highlights his survival rules centered on attack, destruction and suppression.

Retail investors in the currency circle often shout long live the "crypto president" due to the alliance of interests, but it needs to be cautious that we may not be on the same front with thecrypto president. The concept of the United States first and the family first will still be implemented in his crypto world. Although it is not clear what countermeasures Trump will make to non-US and non-family projects, it is obvious that he is using a similar tariff war to ensure the "America first" and "family first" in the world on-chain.

1. US projects will give priority to ETFs and strategic reserves;

2. American projects may enjoy zero capital gains tax in the future, so on the contrary, taxes may be increased for projects that they do not like;

3. "Privacy" of family projects, such as regulatory sandboxes, targeted blood transfusions.

The above three points are obvious trends at the moment. As I think, Trump may still have a way to suppress the output of non-US mining pools, so as to ensure that every remaining BTC is printed with "Made in USA" as much as possible. Only when the regulatory interface is connected to the protocol layer can projects that meet US standards have an on-chain prosperity. And there are many things that can be developed in the next four years, and the Americanization of encryption has inevitably entered the stage of breaking the shell. In this open conspiracy, we either choose an alliance or choose "reject transaction".

4. The shadow of DOGE

Trump's friend Elon Musk once pushed Dogecoin, which was originally born to satirize Bitcoin, to the dual "moon" in market value and physical sense in the 2021 cryptocurrency bull market. This joke coin, which originated from the web meme, was originally developed by engineers Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer in 2013 to mock the crazy speculation in the cryptocurrency market at that time. Its code only took 3 hours to complete, adopted an unlimited issuance mechanism, and even called mining "hole digging", completely subverting the scarcity narrative of Bitcoin.

However, Musk gave this ancient Meme a new life through social media. Since 2019, he regards himself as the "father of Dogecoin", and uses slogans such as "moon landing" and "people's currency" to ignite market enthusiasm. In 2025, he named SpaceX's lunar satellite launch mission DOGE-1, becoming the first space project paid entirely by Dogecoin. This carnival drives Dogecoin to soar by more than 7,000% in 2021, with its market value once exceeding US$85 billion, surpassing traditional giants such as General Motors, and completing a counterattack from ironic tools to the top ten crypto assets in the world.

The greatest sorrow in the world is that you become the person you hate the most. The crypto world is repeating the fate of its object of resistance. Bitcoin, once a "sharp knife of confrontation with centralization", has now become a new carrier of American hegemony - the flow of funds is swinging closely with Trump's tweets, from BTC to Trump, Melania to these so-called counterfeit strategic reserves. Where the baton refers to the future of encryption, the activity of encryption has been lost. When the rebels become part of the establishment, Encryption ultimately fails to escape the narrative closed loop of "the dragon-slaying boy finally becomes an evil dragon".

5. Double-edged sword

Putting aside the perspective of self-interest, Trump is indeed a legend in the history of American politics and business, and I also believe that BTC will accompany him to the moon. But what innovation can encryption under powerful interference and high supervision make? In the past, I was angry at the counterfeit village, but now I am sad about my misfortune. The game of attention and power is flooding the chain, just like Vitalik's reply to Ethereum OG on X:

Will I feel happy when I hear people from crypto Twitter and venture capital institutions proclaim "PvP with a user loss rate of over 99%, and KOL gambler casinos are the product that matches the market in the crypto field best" and say that "the desire for something better is condescending elitism"?

And this situation may become more and more serious in the future. PvP is just a microcosm, and the so-called best project 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 various circles such as tradition and American style, and 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 encrypted rebirth of the cocoon will surely go through this disaster.