Overview

• Bessent told Fox Business on August 14 that Treasury would not buy more Bitcoin and would halt sales of its holdings valued at about $15–$20 billion.
• Hours later, he posted that the department was "committed to exploring budget-neutral pathways" for adding coins to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
• Combined policy confusion and a hotter-than-expected July Producer Price Index drove bitcoin from near $124,000 to roughly $118,000, triggering around $450 million to $1 billion in liquidations.
• The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve remains seeded with forfeited assets and no formal acquisition program has been adopted despite ongoing studies of tariff, gold revaluation and yield-based proposals.
• Senator Cynthia Lummis and other lawmakers are advancing the BITCOIN Act and related budget-neutral measures to authorize systematic, non-deficit bitcoin purchases.