On Thursday, August 14, in an interview with Foxbusiness, Scott Bessent stated that the government would not make new BTC purchases to form a bitcoin reserve. Following the statement by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, the cryptocurrency briefly dropped by almost 6%.
BTC reacted this way to Bessent's statement because previously many members of the crypto community were anticipating purchases of cryptocurrency by U.S. authorities for the reserve. In May 2025, Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that Trump approved the acquisition of 1 million bitcoins. Bo Hines, the executive director for digital assets in the U.S. presidential administration, also spoke about plans for the U.S. to start buying BTC. Therefore, Bessent's statement that there are no such intentions was a painful blow to the crypto industry.
To the surprise of the crypto community, in the evening of August 14, the Secretary of the Treasury published a post on X with entirely different information. It states that the Treasury intends to explore budget-neutral ways to acquire a larger volume of bitcoins to expand the reserve and fulfill the president's promise to make the U.S. a cryptocurrency superpower.
