TechFlow reports on January 8 that Wang Yongli, former vice president of the Bank of China, published an article titled "Rationally Viewing Trump's New Bitcoin Policy" in the January 2025 issue of China Foreign Exchange. In the article, he pointed out that bitcoin highly mimics gold at the "currency" level and is thus referred to as "digital gold." However, bitcoin is purely a blockchain-generated digital asset rather than a natural physical asset; its value depends on the development potential of its application scenarios and the extent of people's belief and investment. Bitcoin can be divided into extremely small units down to one hundred millionth, offering greater payment flexibility, but it lacks backing by physical gold and does not belong to "paper gold" in the strict sense. Once trust is lost, it could vanish into nothingness and become worthless—posing far greater risks than gold.
Moreover, Trump’s new bitcoin policy will be difficult to implement. First, it would be challenging for the United States to acquire substantial new amounts of bitcoin. The advancement of quantum computing technology also poses significant security threats to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Second, the concept of a national strategic bitcoin reserve—whether held by the government (fiscal authority) or the Federal Reserve (central bank) as a dollar reserve—entails considerable risks and uncertainties. Replacing gold reserves with bitcoin reserves is unlikely to bring tangible benefits to the U.S. dollar and cannot practically be used to repay government debt. Third, Trump’s new bitcoin policy contradicts his own stance of strengthening the U.S. dollar as the world’s key currency.
Therefore, bitcoin can only be considered a new type of tradable wealth or digital asset. It is hardly capable of becoming genuine money, cannot replace sovereign currencies, and remains highly questionable as a substitute for gold in national strategic reserves. The international community should calmly and objectively assess Trump’s new bitcoin policy rather than blindly follow the trend.
