US Treasury’s Scott Bessent backpedals: Bitcoin buying still possible

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has clarified that his department is still exploring budget-neutral ways to buy Bitcoin for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — contrasting with his recent comments suggesting the plan was off the table, which triggered a Bitcoin sell-off.

“Treasury is committed to exploring budget-neutral pathways to acquire more Bitcoin to expand the reserve, and to execute on the President’s promise to make the United States the ‘Bitcoin superpower of the world,’” Bessent  clarified  in an X on Thursday. 

He reiterated that the Bitcoin 

BTC$118,961forfeited to the federal government would form the reserve’s foundation.There were already concerns that the US’s slow pace of executing its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could leave it open to being f ront-run by other nation-states . Some feared that the Treasury may not even follow through on the strategy.

Around seven hours earlier on Thursday, Bessent’s comments to FOX Business were widely interpreted to mean the Treasury  isn’t looking to buy Bitcoin .

  Source: Scott Bessent

“We’ve also started to get into the 21st century, a Bitcoin reserve. We’re not going to be buying that, but we are going to use confiscated assets and continue to build that up,” Bessent  told  the media outlet, which wiped nearly $55 billion off Bitcoin’s market cap within 40 minutes of his comments, with Bitcoin falling from $121,073 to $118,886, CoinGecko  data  shows.

Despite the clarification, Bitcoin is trading at $118,500 at the time of writing.

  Bitcoin’s change in price over the last 24 hours. Source: CoinGecko

Less talk, more action, Bitcoin pundits say

While Bessent’s clarification reassured some Bitcoiners, others are still concerned that the US Treasury Department may not execute on its promise:

“Are you seriously still ‘exploring budget-neutral pathways’? At some point, exploration without execution starts to look like avoidance,” Bitcoin mining firm Braiins CEO Eli Nagar  said  on X. 

“Come on, get moving!”

  El Salvador Bitcoin adviser Max Keiser ridiculed Bessent’s use of the term “exploring.” Source: Max Keiser

Treasury has been “exploring” budget-neutral ways for five months now

Trump signed an executive order on March 6  establishing both a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile, both of which would initially use crypto forfeited in government criminal cases. 

The order opened the door for additional Bitcoin purchases via “budget-neutral” strategies that “do not impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers.” However, no major developments were shared on how those strategies may be executed in the Digital Asset Working Group’s lengthy  crypto report  last month.

Among the  budget-neutral strategies  that have been floated are the reevaluation of the Treasury’s gold certificates and tariff revenue.

One reason for the slow progress may be that the Treasury requires congressional approval to purchase Bitcoin in a budget-neutral manner. US Senator Cynthia Lummis made  note  of that point,  calling  on Congress to look closer into the  BITCOIN Act  she introduced in March.

“We’re going to stop selling” Bitcoin: Bessent

While no action has been taken on the buying side, Bessent confirmed that the US doesn’t plan to sell its existing Bitcoin holdings:

“We’re going to stop selling,” he told FOX Business, adding that he believes that the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is currently valued “somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion.”

That aligns closely with BitBo’s Bitcoin Treasuries dashboard, which  reports  that the US holds 198,012 Bitcoin worth $23.5 billion.