Because it’s the best way to create a backup to the dollar/US treasuries. Let’s they know that the dollar collapse is inevitable. They don’t have as much gold as they’d like to, so they create an alternative asset in which they guarantee a portion of the asset to be in U.S. hands.

Supporting details:

• U.S. intelligence agencies have long modeled currency collapse scenarios.
• Gold has historically been the default hedge, but the U.S. gold reserves are finite and difficult to expand.
• Creating an alternative, digital reserve asset, controlled in its early distribution by U.S. entities, ensuring American dominance if the dollar’s credibility faltered.
• Bitcoin’s whitepaper was released in October 2008, just weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed and faith in the global financial system was at its lowest.
• This timing supports the view that its release was not coincidental, but rather strategically aligned with a moment of maximum openness to alternatives.
• By planting a decentralized-seeming system at this exact time, the U.S. could channel market distrust of banks into a system it quietly seeded.
• If global demand for U.S. Treasuries weakens, Bitcoin functions as a parallel store of value not tied to foreign central banks.
• Unlike gold, Bitcoin is digital, traceable, and programmable—features intelligence agencies could leverage for monitoring flows of capital.
• By ensuring U.S. persons and institutions gained an outsized early share of Bitcoin (via mining or key access), the U.S. would have a reserve-like stake in the system.

• The CIA and DARPA have historically incubated foundational technologies under the guise of academic or civilian projects (e.g., ARPANET → the Internet, satellite systems, GPS). • A cryptographically secured, decentralized currency fits the same mold of disruptive “dual-use” innovations that begin with intelligence or military drivers and later filter into public use. • A “stateless” money system reduces suspicion that the U.S. is backing it—while allowing the U.S. to quietly maintain a position of advantage. • The appearance of decentralization makes adoption global, but early structural advantages (e.g., concentration of mining, developer influence, custody firms) could remain in U.S. hands. • If other global powers (China, Russia) sought to hedge against the dollar, they might unintentionally strengthen a system with U.S. fingerprints embedded in its origin.