Treasury Secretary Bessent says US will not be purchasing any Bitcoin to supplement existing reserves

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has clarified that the United States will not be purchasing Bitcoin on the open market to supplement its reserves, despite the existence of a presidential order to build a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. During recent public comments and testimony related to the 2027 budget and digital asset policy, Bessent emphasized that while the Treasury is moving forward with implementation of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve created by President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order, it is constrained to “budget‑neutral” methods of acquiring Bitcoin and does not plan to buy BTC outright as a reserve asset. His remarks followed earlier market reactions to clips that had been interpreted as ruling out government Bitcoin accumulation, prompting clarification that the issue is not whether the U.S. will hold Bitcoin at all, but how it will obtain it. Under the 2025 executive order, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is to be capitalized primarily with Bitcoin forfeited to the federal government through criminal or civil asset forfeiture or penalty proceedings, and any additional acquisition strategies must not impose new costs on taxpayers. Bessent’s statement that the U.S. will not purchase Bitcoin to bolster reserves underscores that current policy relies on seized assets and other budget‑neutral mechanisms—such as potential legislative proposals like Senator Cynthia Lummis’s Bitcoin-focused bills and related ideas like “bit bonds”—rather than direct reserve purchases. This stance is significant for markets because it tempers expectations that the U.S. government will become a large, price-insensitive buyer of Bitcoin, while still confirming that Bitcoin is being formalized as a strategic reserve asset within a defined legal and fiscal framework.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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