Bitcoin recently hit an all-time high of $124,400 and is up 93% from over a year ago. But fans of the cryptocurrency think it can go even higher, and those folks experienced a rollercoaster of emotions on Thursday after Scott Bessent gave conflicting signals about what the U.S. government had planned for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.
Initially, Bessent disappointed Bitcoin fans Thursday morning when he said the U.S. government’s so-called strategic Bitcoin reserve, first announced by President Donald Trump in March, would not be stocked with newly purchased Bitcoin anytime soon.
But the Treasury Secretary seemed to reverse course later in the day, sending mixed signals to crypto folks who know that it’ll really help juice the price if the Trump regime buys a boat-load of digital money for no good reason.
Scott says there’s no new money
Bessent was asked about gold during an interview on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo, and pivoted into talking about Bitcoin, which the White House has argued is important for the future.
“We’ve also started, to get into the 21st century, a Bitcoin strategic reserve. We’re not going to be buying that, but we are going to use confiscated assets and continue to build that up. We’re going to stop selling that,” Bessent said.
The Treasury Secretary said that he believed the government’s bitcoin holdings were somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion, lower than previous estimates of $23 billion, as the crypto news outlet Protos notes.
Why would any of this matter to crypto watchers? Because many were disappointed back in March when it turned out that rumors about a “strategic reserve” of crypto meant that the U.S. government wouldn’t be actually buying new Bitcoin. The U.S. Department of Justice often seizes crypto during criminal prosecutions, and rather than sell that crypto as it typically does, the Trump regime proposed holding onto it as a “reserve.”
Scott flips mysteriously
Bessent’s comments on Thursday morning seemed to confirm there were no plans to actually buy new Bitcoin, something he probably heard complaints about. Because by the afternoon, Bessent sent a tweet that seemed to contradict what he’d said on Fox Business.
“Bitcoin that has been finally forfeited to the federal government will be the foundation of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that President Trump established in his March Executive Order,” Bessent tweeted. “In addition, 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.’”
What does it mean?
What does “budget-neutral pathways” mean? That’s unclear. But it doesn’t close the door on acquiring more Bitcoin in a way that would make the price rise, which is the only thing Bitcoin holders care about. Holding Bitcoin in a “reserve” serves no purpose beyond making it more scarce, thus helping drive up the price.
But the dream for crypto folks is for the U.S. government to inject real U.S. dollars into Bitcoin, artificially inflating the price even more and pushing a kind of free money into the crypto liquidity pool. Because none of this works without real dollars. When those dry up, you’re left with little more than digital hopes and dreams.
The U.S. dollar is literally backed by the U.S. military. Bitcoin? It’s backed by your faith in its price to keep going up forever.
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