US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last night to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the US. The reserve will consist of Bitcoins seized by the government, and will not purchase BTC outside of these.
White House cryptocurrency advisor David Sacks, who revealed details about the Bitcoin reserve, stated that the reserve will be funded by Bitcoins seized by the government through criminal or civil asset forfeiture and therefore will not impose any additional cost on taxpayers.
According to Arkham data, the US government currently has 198,109 BTC in its wallet worth approximately $17 billion.
However, not all of these BTCs belong to the US. The US may have a reserve of 88 thousand BTC, excluding the BTCs from Bitfinex.
Galaxy Digital Research President Alex Thorn said in a post on his X account that the US government has approximately 198,000 BTC, but only a maximum of 88,000 BTC (43% of its holdings) can be used as reserves.
Thorn stated that the remaining 112,000 BTC will be returned to the Bitfinex Exchange.
As you may recall, Bitfinex lost 120,000 BTC in an attack in 2016, and the US government seized some of these funds.
Finally, drawing attention to the US government’s sales, Lookonchain said that the US government previously sold approximately 222,684 BTC (worth around $3.28 billion at the time, and around $19.42 billion today) to Coinbase, Coinbase Prime, and other unknown wallets for an average price of $14,736. Accordingly, the US government lost approximately $16.14 billion at current prices by pre-selling BTC.
we think current US bitcoin balance available for re-purpose into a reserve is max 88k BTC, only 43% of current government holdings. that’s bc of the ~198k BTC now held by USG, 112k BTC will be returned to bitfinex
market will learn the difference between “seized” & “forfeited”
— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) March 7, 2025
*This is not investment advice.
