ADA, XRP, SOL Plunge as White House Backpedals on Trump's Crypto Reserve Plan

An official said Trump was "just giving five examples" of cryptocurrencies that could theoretically be in a crypto stockpile.

Updated Mar 7, 2025, 5:31 p.m. UTCPublished Mar 7, 2025, 4:54 p.m. UTC

Cardano's ADA, XRP and Solana's SOL slid on Friday after a White House official backpedaled on President Trump's recent announcement that he would sign an executive order instructing the Presidential Working Group to move forward with the creation of strategic crypto reserve comprised of ADA, XRP, SOL, bitcoin and ether.

"I think the president just gave five examples of cryptocurrencies in his post. Those five have to be the largest by market cap," the senior White House official said in a call with 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."

According to data from CoinGecko, the official's assertion isn't strictly true. Taking out the two largest stablecoins – Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC – the five largest cryptocurrencies by market cap are bitcoin, ether, XRP, Binance's BNB, and SOL. Dogecoin is the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with ADA right behind it.

In a March 2 social media post, Trump claimed that a "U.S. crypto reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks from Biden Administration." The announcement that it would include SOL, ADA and XRP was met with criticism from many in the industry, who expressed concerns that the inclusion of altcoins in a strategic reserve could be a vehicle for corruption and self-dealing.

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. The crypto stockpile containing other cryptocurrencies will be a separate entity.

ADA plunged over 5% to $0.82

in the minutes following his comments. XRP slid 3.5% to $2.41, while SOL was down 2%. All three tokens are firmly down over the past 24 hours alongside a weak crypto market. Meanwhile, BTC slumped to $87,000 giving up early morning gains.

Senior executives from across the crypto industry have convened in Washington, D.C. for the White House's first crypto summit on Friday afternoon. Crypto companies including Ripple, Gemini, Robinhood Crypto, Crypto.com, Chainlink and Anchorage will be in attendance.

Krisztian Sandor

Krisztian Sandor is a U.S. markets reporter focusing on stablecoins, tokenization, real-world assets. He graduated from New York University's business and economic reporting program before joining CoinDesk. He holds BTC, SOL and ETH.

Cheyenne Ligon

On the news team at CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses on crypto regulation and crime. Cheyenne is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied political science at Tulane University in Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on business and economics reporting. She has no significant crypto holdings.

Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.