Ignoring arguments on semantics (the meaning of "strategic"), here's the difference between AAPL or NVDA and Bitcoin.
In the long term AAPL and NVDA market cap / stock price will converge to their future financial performance and historically speaking it's guaranteed that those companies will decline. So if you're looking for a really long term investment, it's not a good one.
This is different than U.S. buying Alaska from Russia. There's only one Alaska, if U.S. has it then no-one else has it.
Bitcoin was designed to have the same scarcity as land. There's only 21 million bitcoins and if you buy 5 of them today, no one else will own those 5 until you sell them.
If you believe that Bitcoin will become the largest "store of value" asset class that any person, company or country buying Bitcoin today will benefit compared to people / companies / countries that do no buy Bitcoin today.
Is such belief speculative? Of course it is. Buying Alaska from Russia was also speculative purchases. Not everyone thought it was a good deal and no-one knew it has gold and oil.
Is there strategic benefit to U.S. to owning scarce financial asset?
Well, U.S. does benefits from dollar's status as world's reserve currency. If Bitcoin does become planetary store of value and planetary currency, it's better for U.S. to own larger part of it than China or Russia or Iran.
Cryptocurrency peddlers only have two arguments: fiat currency has no value, and bitcoin is gonna 10/100x in its fiat currency value. Well, which one is it?
If a group of people has all the bitcoin in the future, and other people have possession of things they want/need... Well, the value of bitcoin will be zero unless you can compel people who possess actual useful and necessary things to accept it. Which you can do if you are a government with power of taxation. It actually has negative value, because you need the computers running the software that represents it to keep running.
I really cannot figure why people think bitcoin is special. The value of money comes from the power of taxation, not from the underlying representation of the money.
In the long term AAPL and NVDA market cap / stock price will converge to their future financial performance and historically speaking it's guaranteed that those companies will decline. So if you're looking for a really long term investment, it's not a good one.
This is different than U.S. buying Alaska from Russia. There's only one Alaska, if U.S. has it then no-one else has it.
Bitcoin was designed to have the same scarcity as land. There's only 21 million bitcoins and if you buy 5 of them today, no one else will own those 5 until you sell them.
If you believe that Bitcoin will become the largest "store of value" asset class that any person, company or country buying Bitcoin today will benefit compared to people / companies / countries that do no buy Bitcoin today.
Is such belief speculative? Of course it is. Buying Alaska from Russia was also speculative purchases. Not everyone thought it was a good deal and no-one knew it has gold and oil.
Is there strategic benefit to U.S. to owning scarce financial asset?
Well, U.S. does benefits from dollar's status as world's reserve currency. If Bitcoin does become planetary store of value and planetary currency, it's better for U.S. to own larger part of it than China or Russia or Iran.