US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified that his department was still exploring budget-neutral ways to buy Bitcoin for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, in contrast with a recent comment suggesting it 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 post on Thursday.
He reiterated that Bitcoin (BTC) forfeited to the federal government would form the reserve’s foundation.
There were already concerns voiced that the US’s slow pace of executing its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could leave it open to being front-run by other nation-states. Some feared that the Treasury may not even follow through on the strategy.
About seven hours earlier on Thursday, Bessent’s comments to FOX Business were widely interpreted to mean the Treasury wasn’t looking to buy Bitcoin.
“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 showed.
Despite the clarification, Bitcoin was trading at $118,500 at the time of writing.
Less talk, more action, Bitcoin pundits say
While Bessent’s clarification reassured some Bitcoiners, others were still concerned that the US Treasury Department might 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!”
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…
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