Bitcoin to be treated differently from altcoins in US crypto reserve, says Howard Lutnick: report

More details about the potential US crypto reserve are set to come out of the White House's inaugural Crypto Summit on Friday, according to independent political news outlet The Pavlovic Today.

"The President definitely thinks that there's a bitcoin strategic reserve," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly told the outlet. "Now there will be the question of, how do we handle the other cryptocurrencies? And I think the model is going to be announced on Friday when we do that."

Lutnick suggested to The Pavlovic Today that bitcoin would receive a "unique status" under Trump's plans.

"A bitcoin strategic reserve is something the President's interested in. He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you're going to see it executed on Friday,” Lutnick said. "So bitcoin is one thing, and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently — positively, but differently," he added.

The White House Crypto Summit will be chaired by Trump's Crypto Czar David Sacks and Presidential Working Group on Crypto Executive Director Bo Hines. Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi and Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov are expected to be among the crypto industry leaders in attendance.

President Trump announced on Sunday that, following his January executive order , he had directed a working group to "move forward" on a U.S. Crypto Strategic Reserve, including BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and ADA — with those assets initially rising 10%, 15%, 25%, 30% and 70% from last week's lows, respectively. Bitcoin subsequently dropped over 10%, and ether plunged more than 15% after Trump's announcement of new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China fueled risk-off sentiment — erasing the crypto reserve news gains on Monday.

Despite the recent announcements, questions remain over how any such reserve would be funded and how likely it is to be enacted — with Federal Reserve and Treasury Department options both likely to require new legislation to be passed by Congress.

Bitcoin rose 3.4% on Wednesday following the news, climbing back above the $90,000 mark, according to The Block's Bitcoin Price page .