2025 has been full of disappointments for the cryptocurrency industry, and the “US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” is definitely one of them.
If you want to understand why the “US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” is viewed as the biggest policy rug-pull of 2025, you just need to look at one (obviously fake) screenshot that has been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) this morning.
The facetious image shows a hilarious one-sided conversation of a supposed lobbyist screaming into the void of a government inbox.
To understand the pain in that screenshot, you have to rewind to late 2024. The euphoria was blinding. The plan, as pitched by Senator Lummis and hyped by every influencer with a microphone, was simple: the U.S. would stop auctioning seized Bitcoin and start actively buying it to offset the national debt. It was supposed to be the “sovereign FOMO” event that would send BTC to $500,000.
However, the government never actually intended to buy it. The “Strategic Reserve” turned out to be a masterclass in ambiguity.
The White House signed the Executive Order establishing the “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.” However, it turned out that the administration’s definition of a “reserve” was simply holding onto the 200,000 BTC the DOJ had already seized from dark web busts. They didn’t buy a single satoshi. They just promised not to sell what they already had for free.
The lobby, which spent hundreds of millions getting “pro-crypto” candidates elected, found itself in the position of the sender in that fake email.
In the meantime, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), the undisputed “Godmother” of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the industry’s most loyal ally on Capitol Hill, has announced she will not seek re-election in 2026.
Collapsing Polymarket odds
Polymarket bettors now see only a 28% chance of a Bitcoin reserve being established in the US by the end of 2026.
The year starts with cautious optimism (roughly 40%), but look at that vertical climb in late February leading into March. The odds surged to their all-time high (nearly 70%) in March.
Then, the line got choppy. It dropped from the 70% highs but finds support around the 40-50% range. This is the “Just checking in…” phase. The big announcement didn’t drop immediately, and doubts started to creep in.
Then, there was the phase of acceptance. There were no more spikes, no more rumors, just a slow realization that the “Reserve” was just a rebranding of seized assets.
