“I thought it was very important that we stay in the front of this one,” said President Donald Trump at the first-ever White House “Crypto Summit” on Friday. The day before, he signed an executive order titled “Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile.” And with that, the decentralized cryptocurrency created to escape government regulation and interference now has a government reserve. How’s that for irony?

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, launched in 2009. Its creation a year after the 2008 financial panic was no accident.

In theory, at least, there is a finite number of digital “coins,” which defeats one of the primary problems with fiat currency such as the dollar. When the government wants more dollars, it prints more dollars, which devalues the dollar and causes inflation. Cryptocurrency doesn’t work that way, although “mining” it does take time.

What are cryptocurrencies? As Mark Alexander explained:

If you are under 30 or have had college kids in your family over the last decade, you are likely familiar with cryptos. In short, they are valuations given to digital or virtual holdings maintained on ledgers called blockchains, and they gained followers because transactions with “digital currencies” are private.

In other words, they are valuations given to numeric formulations that actually have no intrinsic value and, ironically, are denominated in dollars. Ironic, as well, because fiat currencies are worth only as much as the holder’s confidence in that currency’s value.

So, in a sense, he concluded, “Cryptos are nothing but air.”

For this reason, the value of cryptocurrencies has been volatile over the entire 16 years of their existence. What may be worth a fortune today could bankrupt you tomorrow.

Elon Musk is a huge fan of crypto, and evidently, he has won over the one-time skeptic Trump. In 2019, Trump also called it “based on thin air.” Why create this reserve now? “Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve,” Trump’s EO says. “Just as it is in our country’s interest to thoughtfully manage national ownership and control of any other resource, our Nation must harness, not limit, the power of digital assets for our prosperity.”

We have strategic reserves of gold, oil, medical supplies, military equipment, and other commodities. The welcome news is an audit. David Sacks, Trump’s crypto czar, says “there has never been a complete audit” of the government’s reserves, but Trump’s EO calls for one. Sacks also calls this a “digital Fort Knox.” We’ll see about that.

In an accompanying fact sheet, the White House says, “The United States will not sell bitcoin deposited into this Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which will be maintained as a store of reserve assets.” That’s a good limitation given what Joe Biden did with the Strategic Polling Petroleum Reserve.

The bad news is that, according to the EO, most of the 200,000 or so bitcoins held by the Treasury Department were “finally forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings.” Forfeiture is often a horrible abuse of civil rights. So, great, the government has locked up people’s assets that are currently valued at $17 billion.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal, who are about as skeptical of this Trump move as they are of tariffs, explain the other problem with forfeiture: “Assets seized in civil and criminal forfeitures are typically returned to victims or sold with the proceeds remitted to Treasury to reduce the budget deficit. The Trump plan is to keep confiscated tokens as investments, which might later be sold to finance a President’s spending prerogatives. Future presidents of both parties could raid the stockpile to bypass Congress on spending.” Perhaps his “will not sell” clause obviates that. Or perhaps evading it is as easy as another president issuing another EO.

Veteran financial analyst and self-described “crypto cynic” Cliff Asness lists numerous problems with Trump’s plan. He concludes, “Finally, and perhaps most obviously (to economists at least), even if crypto is a viable long-term competitor to the U.S. dollar, why on earth would we be promoting this direct competitor to our being the world’s reserve currency, something that conveys upon the United States exorbitant privilege?”

Evidently, Trump sees it not as promoting the competition but as trying to have a hand in how that competition plays out. Time will tell if he’s right.