President Trump officially creating a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve for the United States is unquestionably a historic moment for Bitcoin. The journey from a fringe technology on an obscure internet mailing list to an official designation within the most powerful economy in the world is profound, no matter how you slice it. Bitcoin separated from the rest of the crypto pack and received international attention after the US recognized it as a new store of value.

The details of the executive order are that the US will convert its current and prior holdings of bitcoin into a fund with the express purpose of not selling. The US acquired these bitcoins over the years from criminal and civil asset forfeiture. The EO also claims that any new purchase of bitcoin must be budget-neutral, yielding no incremental cost to taxpayers.

The Bitcoin community has been pushing for a strategic reserve for over a year, and now they have it. The BSR is a careful compromise. It satisfies Trump’s campaign pledge, which he announced at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville last summer, to create a national bitcoin stockpile. It does not fully satisfy the wishes of the Bitcoin community, many of whom have called for the US to buy new bitcoin. Instead, it converts (relabels) the existing holdings into a strategic reserve. But it does establish a strong precedent for Bitcoin and makes it even less likely for the government to ban it in the future. No question that this is good news for Bitcoin.

Converting existing assets like Fort Knox gold into bitcoin makes sense. Selling this gold and buying bitcoin would be budget-neutral since it would swap one physical asset for another. This would be an improvement because bitcoin does everything that gold can, but in a better way because of its portability, fungibility, low transaction fees, low transportation fees, more restricted supply, and greater scarcity. Gold has value only because we, as a society, deem it so. Bitcoin is just as unique, possibly more so, and certainly more scarce. The logical conclusion is for the US to convert its gold holdings into bitcoin. This would also put the US on stronger financial footing, given that Bitcoin’s greater scarcity would likely lead to greater value in the future, almost surely more than gold.

But the US should not raise taxes or print money to buy bitcoin, as many Bitcoiners have suggested. This would only expand the size and scope of the government, the world’s worst capital allocator. No resource from the government is free. All of it comes from the people, either directly through higher taxes or indirectly through higher prices—inflation. If the government raises taxes or prints money to buy bitcoin, it is essentially robbing individuals of their right to buy that bitcoin. And this chafes against Bitcoin’s underlying ethos of decentralization. The chief goal is to return power to the people, not to concentrate it into the hands of the few, whether that is the president, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Federal Reserve Board.

The opposition I have to expanding bitcoin holdings is not specific to Bitcoin. Governments should not be in the business of acquiring or managing assets, whether those assets are bitcoin, gold, bonds, or equities. Those decisions need to rest in the private sector, which can recruit better talent and is subject to the beneficial effects of market competition. So, swapping an inferior asset like gold for a better asset like bitcoin is a good policy. But an even better policy would be to sell that gold altogether and return the money to where it belongs: with the people.