US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Risks 30% Reduction in Single Legal Ruling

The US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could lose nearly 30% of its holdings in one legal move. This remains true even if the government does not sell a single coin. Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The order directed the Treasury Department to consolidate government-held BTC into a reserve account. It promised that the United States would not sell those coins. Yet, the headline number for the reserve may overstate actual holdings. I suspect the government cannot treat all BTC as a permanent strategic asset. Data from Coincex and Bitcoin Treasuries estimates the US controls about 328,372 BTC. This makes it the world’s largest known state holder. At today’s bitcoin price, that stash is worth roughly $21.6 billion. However, there is a complication. A large chunk of that figure includes BTC held by the government. It is not cleanly government-owned in the strategic sense. The executive order explicitly allows dispositions pursuant to a court order. It singles out a carve-out for assets returned to identifiable victims. That exception matters because roughly 94,643 BTC is tied to the 2016 Bitfinex hack. This is about 30% of the government's total holdings. If a court orders those coins as restitution, the reserve number falls mechanically to about 234,000 BTC. The reserve number is real, but the ownership question remains open. We often discuss the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as if it were a clean, sovereign holding. The Bitfinex case introduces a significant risk of reduction.