Fourth Turning: US Institutions Fight Over Real Money

Source Summary

Written by Matt Morgan, Editor at The Daily Bell: The Trump administration cannot decide which department gets to run its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and the fight has frozen the whole project. The US Treasury was meant to hold it. Now the Commerce Department wants the job, and the Justice Department has been pulled in to decide who has the legal authority to keep the coins at all. This looks like a paperwork snarl, but it is something older and larger. When the monetary order cracks, the state reaches for the hardest money in the room and moves to control it. The US government did this with gold in 1933, in the depths of the last Fourth Turning. It is doing it with Bitcoin now, in the depths of this one. A Good Fight The order signed in March 2025 built the reserve out of Bitcoin the government had already seized through criminal and civil forfeiture. Its command on that Bitcoin was blunt: it “shall not be sold and shall be maintained as reserve assets.” Held forever, in plain words. Then the lawyers found the snag. Nobody is sure Treasury has the authority to sit on a volatile digital asset indefinitely, so the plan has pivoted toward Commerce, with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel refereeing. Bloomberg reports: Trump Bitcoin Reserve Faces Hurdles as Departments Seek Control “The Trump administration’s plan to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has been complicated by two government departments vying to run it, alongside questions about which has the legal authority to do so. President Donald ...