White House Says Ripple’s XRP, Solana, Cardano Are In Trump’s Radar Due To Their Large Markets

White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sachs has shed light on why President Donald Trump included Ripple-promoted XRP, Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA) in his remarks about a U.S. crypto strategic reserve on March 2.

According to Sacks, Trump mentioned these assets in his earlier statement due to their ranking among the top five largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.

“I think the president just gave five examples of cryptocurrencies in his post. Those five have to be the largest by market cap,” Sacks told reporters ahead of Friday’s White House Crypto Summit. “I think people are reading into that a little bit too much. The bottom line is, I think that what we’ve announced here is consistent with what the president has always said about the space.”

Data from CoinGecko shows that the senior White House official’s assertion isn’t exactly correct. Excluding the two largest stablecoins — Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC — the five biggest cryptocurrencies by market value are Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Binance’s BNB, and SOL. ADA holds the eighth position on the crypto leaderboard.

Trump’s Bitcoin Reserve vs. Crypto Stockpile

On March 6, Trump signed an order directing his administration to create a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, capitalized with the U.S. government’s seized bitcoin holdings. While Bitcoin is in a league of its own in the newly announced strategic reserve, other cryptocurrencies seized by the U.S. government in civil and criminal forfeitures will be pooled to create a separate Digital Assets Stockpile.

As ZyCrypto has previously covered, some in the industry questioned the inclusion of XRP, ADA, and SOL to the national stockpile, citing the lack of developer activity and decentralization witnessed in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Sacks said they are “not sure” whether the federal government owns any of these altcoins, reiterating the EO’s call for a full audit of its current reserves. 

“In terms of what we’ll actually have, we have to do the accounting,” he opined. “We know it owns Bitcoin. I believe it owns some Ethereum. I’m not sure about the other ones. No one’s able to give us a straight answer yet.”

After the auditing, the Secretary of the Treasury and their team would be entrusted with portfolio management, making sure the assets are handled in a way that serves the long-term interests of the American people. Sacks revealed that this could entail numerous financial strategies, including staking, rebalancing, or even selling certain assets at the Treasury Secretary’s discretion.

“And yes, that could include staking, it could include rebalancing, [and] it could include sales,” Sacks explained. “These are all options they can pursue if the Secretary of the Treasury believes these are in the long-term interest of the American people.”

Notably, Sacks recently lamented the U.S. government’s sale of Bitcoin, noting that it had so far lost out on a staggering $17 billion in value by selling confiscated BTC.