US President Trump suddenly announced last night that he will include BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and ADA in the US's new cryptocurrency strategic reserve, and has instructed the presidential task force to advance the strategic reserve plan, causing these named cryptocurrencies to surge in price upon hearing the news, but also raising concerns about insider trading.

Trump's post raises insider trading concerns

According to on-chain analyst Ai Aunt's monitoring, last night a whale was long BTC and ETH with 50x leverage on Hyperliquid, and after Trump announced the cryptocurrency strategic reserve plan and drove up the prices, this whale closed out most of its long positions of 88,510 ETH and 831.57 BTC (only leaving 30.92 BTC), making a profit of $6.83 million within 24 hours.

Ai Aunt pointed out that this whale has withdrawn the $12.85 million in USDC, including the principal and profits, back to the Arbitrum network, and sighed:

Whether it's insider information or divine intervention, a win is a win.

However, Coinbase executive Conor Grogan later stated that after tracking the whale's wallet, it was found that the funds came from phishing, and the user was a user of the cryptocurrency gambling platform Roobet, who had already closed out their long positions before Trump's second post announcing the establishment of the Bitcoin and Ethereum strategic reserve, missing out on millions of dollars in profits, and was just a gambler using phished funds, not an insider trader.

David Sacks denies conflict of interest

At the same time, White House AI and cryptocurrency czar David Sacks has also been accused of having a conflict of interest.

Pathfinder Research founder Derek Martin pointed out that since 2017, David Sacks has invested in Bitwise through his own venture capital firm Craft Ventures and has been listed as a major investor, and the five cryptocurrencies that Trump announced last night to be included in the strategic reserve are exactly the same as Bitwise's top five holdings, so Bitwise and its investors have made a lot of money as a result.

However, in response to the criticism, David Sacks cited a Financial Times report to deny it:

The report is correct, that before starting to work for the government, I sold off all my cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH and SOL.

The report stated that although Craft Ventures holds minority stakes in some cryptocurrency startups, both David Sacks and the firm sold off their direct cryptocurrency holdings, including BTC, ETH and SOL, shortly after Trump took office.

David Sacks is currently undergoing a government ethics review, and after the review is completed, he will fully update his holdings. But tracing cryptocurrencies is inherently difficult, and even if he himself didn't, it would be hard to track whether he has disclosed insider information to family and friends.