President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to launch a Bitcoin reserve using digital assets surrendered to the U.S. government by romance scammers, civil offenders and other convicted criminals like Hushpuppi, Mr Woodberry and so on.

About 200,000 bitcoin worth $19 billion forfeited in civil and criminal proceedings will now be permanently transferred into the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as Mr Trump plans to make America the world’s crypto capital.

The U.S. president directed the secretaries of treasury and commerce to develop “budget-neutral strategies” to acquire more bitcoin in a manner that doesn’t burden American taxpayers, according to White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks.

“The Reserve will be capitalised with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings,” Mr Sacks said on X.

In April 2022, the FBI seized 151.8 bitcoin from Nigerian internet fraudster Olalekan Jacob Ponle popularly called Mr Woodberry over a business email scam that defrauded American companies of tens of millions of dollars.

Nigeria’s internet fraudster Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, aka Ray Hushpuppi, also forfeited millions of dollars and other digital assets to the U.S. government in 2022. 

He was arrested in Dubai, extradited to the U.S. and is serving an 11-year jail term at the Fort Dix correctional facility in New Jersey.

In another case, the U.S. Secret Service seized $1.5 million from the Binance wallet of Nigerian serial fraudster Avwerosuo Omokri in 2024 and sought a forfeiture of the digital currencies in bitcoin, ether, avax, USDT and pepe.

With the newly established reserve, funds forfeited in legal and criminal proceedings will make their way to the government coffers, bolstering the U.S. crypto mine.

Mr Sacks likened the crypto reserve to Fort Knox, a heavily guarded U.S. military base that stores the country’s gold.