Bitcoin was built to give investors a way out of the US dollar. Today the US government owns about $25 billion worth of it, and it is openly rooting for the price to go up.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called himself "a big proponent of the US taking the worldwide lead in crypto."
So the asset investors bought to escape the dollar is now being used by Washington to strengthen the dollar. That twist sits at the center of the strategic Bitcoin reserve, and it matters more than any single day's price.
Bitcoin has fallen hard from its peak, the national debt sits at $40 trillion, the Federal Reserve's interest rates are higher, and inflation is still high. One caveat before we start: everything below reflects what the Trump administration wants today, and a future president could change it fast.
That tug-of-war over the dollar is also why Briefs Finance CEO Jaspreet Singh is hosting a free live investor workshop on September 29 on how to profit from the dollar losing value. It's virtual, with sessions at 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern, and thousands of investors have already registered, so save your seat here.
The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Was Built With Seized Coins, Not Tax Dollars
The government can't afford to buy Bitcoin. In 2026, Washington will collect around $5.5 trillion in taxes and spend about $7.5 trillion.
Spending more than you collect is called deficit spending, and years of it are how the national debt reached $40 trillion. So the coins didn't come from a checkbook.
They came from seizures, because when someone commits a crime in the US and holds Bitcoin, the government takes it. For years the habit was to sell that seized Bitcoin and pocket the cash.
Then Bitcoin climbed from pennies to dollars, to $1,000, to tens of thousands, and at one point past $100,000. The hundreds of millions of dollars Washington made on those sales would have been worth far more if it had simply held on.
The White House's own conclusion is that selling early cost the country a lot of appreciation. That is the commitment President Trump and his Treasury Secretary have now made: build the reserve not by buying Bitcoin, but by keeping the Bitcoin the government already takes in.
Gold, Oil, and Now a Bitcoin Reserve
A strategic reserve is a stockpile the government holds on purpose, and this is not the first one.
| Reserve | The short version |
|---|---|
| Gold | Kept at Fort Knox. Nobody knows the exact amount, but by the numbers it's the largest gold reserve in the world. |
| Oil | Huge amounts of oil bought after the 1970s oil crisis, released during shocks to bring prices down. That happened a lot after the pandemic. |
| Bitcoin | A little over 300,000 coins, seized rather than purchased, and now held instead of sold. |
That Bitcoin pile makes the United States the largest government owner of Bitcoin. It is not the largest owner of Bitcoin overall, at least not yet.
Why a Bitcoin Reserve Splits Bitcoin Investors
Bitcoin's original pitch was simple. It's a decentralized currency, meaning no government or single entity runs it, so it's managed by the people, for the people, and anyone can own a piece.
Now the largest and most powerful government in the world is holding it to boost its own wealth, and using that wealth to strengthen the dollar.
Some Bitcoin investors love this, because a government that accumulates coins helps push the price up. A government sitting on a pile of Bitcoin also wants the price higher, since a higher price makes the government look richer.
Others hate it for the same reason. If Washington keeps accumulating and never sells, it gains more and more influence over a currency that was supposed to answer to no one.
How the Bitcoin Reserve Grew to 328,000 Coins
The pile has grown fast. By 2021 the government held about 120,000 Bitcoin, and today it holds about 328,000.
What makes today's number different is what happens next. In 2025, President Trump signed an executive order, a written order from the president, telling the government to stop selling seized Bitcoin and start keeping it.
So over the coming years, that 328,000 should only grow.
There Will Only Ever Be 21 Million Bitcoin
Bitcoin is coded so that only 21 million coins can ever exist. Nobody can make more.
That fixed supply is why a growing government stockpile excites some investors. Every coin Washington holds is a bigger slice of a pie that can't grow.
In Jaspreet's words, the government becomes a bigger and bigger shareholder in Bitcoin. It also brings legitimacy, because the largest and most powerful government in the world is now building a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Today the government isn't using tax dollars or printed money to buy Bitcoin. Someday it might.
If it does, more dollars flow into a supply that can't grow. With 328,000 coins already off the market, every additional government purchase leaves less Bitcoin for everyone else, and more buyers chasing less supply means a higher price per coin.
The Real Reason Washington Wants a Bigger Balance Sheet
Why would a government want to build wealth through reserves at all? The answer starts with the $40 trillion national debt.
Walk into Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo for a loan and they ask two questions. How much income do you have, and what assets do you own that you could sell if that income went away?
The US government gets judged the same way. Its income is tax revenue, and its assets are the economy plus everything it owns: gold, oil, and now Bitcoin.
When those assets are worth more, $40 trillion of debt doesn't feel like as big of a problem, and the government can justify borrowing more. More borrowing means more money to spend into the economy.
The Government Is Addicted to Spending
If the government cut spending from $7.5 trillion to $5.5 trillion today, ending deficit spending in one move, Jaspreet's math says the recession would be worse than the 2008 crash.
Our economy is measured by GDP, or gross domestic product, which is simply all the spending that happens in the economy. In 2026, US GDP is about $32 trillion, and $7.5 trillion of that is the government's own spending.
The largest spender in the economy isn't you, or me, or even Nvidia. It's the federal government.
So cut $2 trillion of government spending and GDP falls from about $32 trillion to about $30 trillion:
- That's a drop of more than 6%.
- Between 2007 and 2009, GDP fell 4.3%.
- A drop that size is a recession about 50% worse than 2008, which means roughly 50% higher unemployment and 50% more economic pain.
Nobody wants that pain, so the spending continues. That's the addiction.
The Trump administration's alternative is option two: keep the deficit spending, and try to grow the economy faster than the debt. The catch is that the economy isn't growing fast enough to keep up with the debt right now.
That leaves the other side of the balance sheet, the list of everything the government owns and everything it owes. If the economy can't outrun the debt, maybe the assets can, and Bitcoin is the asset Washington has decided to let run.
The Bitcoin Reserve Turns the Debasement Trade Upside Down
Gold, silver, and Bitcoin are generally known as the debasement trade, a bet that these assets rise as the dollar loses value.
Investors buy them because they're worried about the dollar, while the government is holding Bitcoin to strengthen the dollar. Both sides own the same coin for opposite reasons.
The worry comes from the debt. With $40 trillion owed, the Federal Reserve, the country's central bank, has to print a lot of money to fuel it, and printing money creates inflation.
Inflation means the value of the dollar drops and each dollar buys less. So investors hedge that falling dollar with Bitcoin, while Washington holds Bitcoin to build wealth and then uses that wealth as permission to borrow even more dollars.
That falling-dollar hedge is exactly what Jaspreet's free live workshop on September 29 covers: how investors can profit from the dollar losing value, not just wait it out. You can register here if you haven't already.
A Bitcoin Reserve Can Crash as Fast as It Booms
Bitcoin can jump 20% and fall 40% in the same month.
Remember when Bitcoin broke $100,000 for the first time, then $110,000, and kept climbing? Investors felt rich.
Then it fell back to $60,000, everyone decided Bitcoin was finished, and the same investors felt broke. Those booms and busts aren't rare - they're part of owning Bitcoin.
Now put the government in that seat. It holds only about 300,000 coins right now, which is a lot, but imagine the reserve keeps growing and Bitcoin doubles, triples, or quadruples.
Jaspreet isn't predicting that. But if it happened, Bitcoin would become a significant source of wealth on the government's balance sheet, and the government would look very rich.
Think of it like a house. You buy one for $250,000, the housing market booms, and now it's worth $1 million.
You don't want to sell, so you do a cash-out refinance, which means taking on new debt against the higher value and walking away with cash in your pocket. Plenty of Americans love this move when their assets go up.
Then the house drops 50% and you're underwater, meaning you owe more than it's worth. As long as you have the income to keep paying, you're fine, but you can see the problem.
A government flush with Bitcoin gains would do the same thing. A strong balance sheet is a reason to borrow more, borrowing more is a reason to spend more, and spending more is how the economy grows.
That works while Bitcoin is high. If Bitcoin crashes, people start to worry the government doesn't have enough assets to support all that debt.
Jaspreet calls these hypotheticals, because we haven't seen it happen yet. But the logic behind the reserve is exactly this: selling the coins gives Washington cash today and forfeits any appreciation, while keeping them lets the balance sheet grow with the Bitcoin price.
And a bigger balance sheet gets used. When you have more assets you borrow more, because that's how the system works, and in Jaspreet's words, that's not necessarily the right thing to do - it's just what people do.
The Biggest Bitcoin Holder Could Rewrite the Rules
Bitcoin's whole appeal was that it's decentralized: usable anywhere in the world, controlled by no entity and no government.
If the US government keeps growing its share, it could one day become the largest holder of Bitcoin in the world. At that point, could it change the rules on how you use Bitcoin?
The obvious objection is that you can't change Bitcoin's rules, because they're embedded in the platform. That's true.
But a government that controls the world's largest share of Bitcoin could still change the rules on how you transact with it or use it, in ways that favor the government. Nobody knows what that would look like, and it may never happen, but it belongs on an investor's list.
How Jaspreet Singh Handles Bitcoin in His Own Portfolio
Jaspreet's own caveat comes first. He's a random guy on YouTube, and investing has risks: you're never guaranteed to make money, and you will lose money at some point.
Do your own due diligence, and never blindly trust a random guy on YouTube. With that said, he treats Bitcoin as a speculative asset, meaning an investment that moves up and down fast and whose long-term future nobody knows.
In that sense, it behaves like a tech stock. His biggest asset is his business, followed by real estate and then stocks, because both are proven over history.
Bitcoin lives in the speculative slice of his portfolio alongside startup companies. It's a small piece, small enough that if it went to zero he'd be fine.
He also likes cash flow, because investments that pay him don't force him to sell anything to get money. He first bought Bitcoin at around $3,000 a coin, and after it ran up he sold some and bought a rental property that now produces income for him.
He bought Bitcoin because he thinks it has value. He keeps it small because he knows it's speculative, even though some higher-risk investors are comfortable going all in.
He wants assets that produce income, whether that's rental properties or dividend paying stocks, so he can live off that income and stop worrying about the ups and downs.
That's the mindset behind his free September 29 workshop, where he'll walk investors through how to profit from the dollar losing value instead of just riding out the swings. Grab your seat here.
Every investor has to decide what's right for them. The goal isn't to tell you what to believe about Bitcoin, it's to help you make a smarter decision with your money.
What Happens to the Bitcoin Reserve After Trump?
Everything above describes what today's administration wants. Jaspreet doesn't know where Bitcoin will be in five, 10, or 15 years, and neither does Washington.
If the next president decides Bitcoin is bad and sells off the entire strategic reserve, the price could flip very fast. Bitcoin carries a lot of emotion and a lot of opinions, and that speculative nature isn't going away.
The reserve exists because one president decided to stop selling. The next one can decide to start again.
