Crypto
Fort Knox Gold
Mary Brooks, director of the Mint, showing off the gold bars stored in Fort Knox in 1974 (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

DOGE might start counting gold bars at Fort Knox. That could embolden the crypto bulls.

They’re trying to will a strategic national bitcoin reserve into existence.

DOGE’s next efficiency effort might be counting the number of gold bars at Fort Knox. 

“Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Fort Knox? Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not,” Elon Musk mused in a recent X post. President Trump backed the so-called “audit” on Wednesday. 

Now, crypto proponents are rallying around the effort, arguing that a discrepancy in the amount of gold in Fort Knox would cement the case for a strategic national bitcoin reserve.

One of the arguments is that bitcoin is easily traceable. While talks of a national reserve had gained momentum during the campaign, efforts seem to be stalling at the federal level, and some are getting antsy. 

“Unlike gold, bitcoin is fully transparent and traceable and auditable in real time while being resistant to centralized control,” Rachel Lin, CEO of trading platform SynFutures, told Sherwood News. 

The amount of gold holdings at Fort Knox is 147.3 million ounces, according to the US Mint. The last audit was conducted in 1974, when Gerald Ford was president.

As the song goes, the revolution will not be televised — but the audit might be livestreamed, despite the US Mint stating that “no visitors are permitted in the facility.”

David Siemer, CEO of Wave Digital Assets, argued that less gold than expected could further erode confidence in traditional reserves and strengthen the case for bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

At the very least, he said, it would accelerate discussions about diversifying reserves beyond gold or traditional assets. More broadly, it would underscore a key advantage of bitcoin: its auditability.

“Bitcoin supply is publicly verifiable at all times. This transparency is precisely why institutions and governments are increasingly taking it seriously,” he added.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, one of the biggest proponents of a bitcoin national reserve, also supported the idea of an audit, saying that unlike the precious metal, bitcoin can be audited “any time 24/7 with a basic computer.”

Lummis introduced the BITCOIN Act (aka the Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide Act) in July — a plan for the government to acquire 1 million bitcoin by purchasing up to 200,000 coins annually over five years.

While many supporters expected a national bitcoin reserve to materialize early under the new administration, so far, it’s still at the “exploration” level. At the state level, though, there are “32 states with bitcoin and digital asset legislative efforts in 2025,” according to the Satoshi Act Fund.

A Fort Knox audit could also affect bitcoin’s price: experts say a shortfall in gold could push it higher. 

“Bitcoin, already seen as digital gold, could see more demand. Speculation alone could drive price action, but a serious conversation about BTC as a reserve asset would be an even bigger catalyst,” said Ermin Sharich, cofounder of bitcoin-backed stablecoin platform Aegis.


Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider.

More Crypto

See all Crypto
crypto

Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

crypto

Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC and Chartr Limited produce fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and are fully owned subsidiaries of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Money, LLC, Robinhood U.K. Ltd, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, Robinhood Gold, LLC, Robinhood Asset Management, LLC, Robinhood Credit, Inc., Robinhood Ventures DE, LLC and, where applicable, its managed investment vehicles.