US Treasury Freezes Bitcoin Purchases — Here's What Scott Bessent Plans To Do Instead

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday confirmed the government will not be buying additional Bitcoin BTC/USD for its strategic reserve, saying the holdings will grow only through confiscated assets.

What Happened: Speaking to Fox Business, Bessent also projected that tariff revenues could exceed earlier forecasts, potentially surpassing $300 billion this year.

“We’re not going to be buying that, but we are going to use confiscated assets and continue to build that up,” Bessent said of the Bitcoin reserve, which he estimated to be worth “somewhere between 15 and 20 billion” at current prices. “We’re going to stop selling that.”

Bessent's remarks came as fresh U.S. economic data showed the July Producer Price Index rising 3.3% annually, the highest level since February, and 0.9% month-on-month, the largest increase since June 2022.

The data release coincided with a sharp $420 million liquidation across the crypto market, with Bitcoin briefly dropping from an all-time high of $121,193 to $117,550 within an hour, according to TradingView.

On tariff revenues, Bessent said July collections hit a record monthly high of more than $28 billion, making tariffs the third-largest income source for the government.

Also Read: Bitcoin, Ethereum At Historic Highs But Could Go Higher, Bitwise’s Matt Hougan Predicts

He noted that his earlier projection of $300 billion in annual tariff revenue could be revised upward. “There’s a chance that I’m going to have to substantially upgrade that number,” Bessent said. “Every $300 billion is one percent of GDP.”

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He added that such revenues could reduce the deficit-to-GDP ratio from current levels of 6.5%–6.7% toward the administration's goal of bringing it “back into the threes” before the end of President Trump's term.

Why It Matters: Bessent also detailed other asset monetization strategies, including revenues from export agreements with semiconductor firms Nvidia NVDA and AMD AMD, where the companies agreed to share 15% of their China sales in exchange for export licenses.

He described the U.S. approach as leveraging both tangible assets, such as natural resource production on public lands, and intangible assets, such as trade access to the American consumer.

The Treasury Secretary reiterated that these moves form part of a broader effort to manage the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet, with potential legislation to create a fund overseeing such holdings.

“I think this is going to be one of President Trump’s great legacies,” Bessent said. “He’s going to be the president who created assets for the American people, not debt.”

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