The United States Lost $16 Billion in Bitcoin Without Selling a Single Coin

"Put a stone in its place, it will be worth just as much to you," remarked the passerby from La Fontaine to the miser who lost his treasure. The United States has just experienced this formula on its own bitcoin stash.

Sixteen billion dollars evaporated without a single sell order being placed. The U.S. government's crypto holdings have melted since their peak in October 2025, and Washington is not to blame. Bitcoin has lost a third of its value during this time. The bill comes eighteen months after the decree that created the strategic bitcoin reserve and prohibited the liquidation of confiscated BTC. The United States holds the largest public treasure in bitcoin on the planet, accounting for about 1.5% of the circulating supply. Key points of this article:

• The U.S. government's bitcoin holdings have drastically dropped from $40 billion to $25 billion without any sales.
• A decree signed by Donald Trump prohibited the sale of confiscated bitcoins, leading to a unique management of this strategic reserve.

The American crypto treasure has dropped from $40 billion to $25 billion

The peak dates back to October 2025, when bitcoin was nearing $124,000. The public wallet was then worth about $40.7 billion. A year later, BTC is trading around $83,000, and the same pile is worth about $25.5 billion. Yet, no one has sold anything.

The details are dizzying. Addresses linked to federal agencies contained about 325,000 bitcoins at the beginning of October, then 306,800 after the transfers on October 8, according to Arkham Intelligence's counter. This is in addition to $126 million in USDT, $63 million in WBTC, and $31 million in BNB. Arkham tracks every address linked to an agency, from the FBI to the DEA, while a request for access to administrative documents filed in March 2025 attributed only 28,988 BTC to the U.S. Marshals Service. The discrepancy is thus due to the counting method, not to hidden sales. The decree signed by Donald Trump on March 6, 2025, ended the resale of confiscated bitcoins.

Why the United States No Longer Sells a Single Bitcoin

Donald Trump signed the decree on March 6, 2025, which created the strategic bitcoin reserve and locked the confiscated BTC in a vault from which nothing can exit. Before this text, the state sold its seizures as they came, depending on the Marshals' auctions. Altcoins, on the other hand, are stored in a separate structure called the Digital Asset Stockpile, which remains sellable. Note the limitation of this exercise. The decree provides for acquisition strategies at no cost to the taxpayer, without ever unlocking a single line of purchase, and the reserve thus only grows at the pace of confiscations.

This does not prevent the coins from moving. The Treasury moved 12,267 bitcoins worth about $1.01 billion on October 8 from a wallet resulting from the Bitfinex hack. No deposit on an exchange platform followed. Coinbase Prime had received 3,200 BTC and $119 million in USDT the day before, but the firm also acts as a custodian for institutions. The hypothesis of a disguised liquidation does not hold well.

Past Sales Have Cost the United States More Than the Drop in Bitcoin

Before 2025, the state sold about 195,000 bitcoins through judicial proceedings. Total revenue: $366 million. The White House crypto advisor David Sacks estimated the lost revenue at over $17 billion in March 2025, when bitcoin was still worth $89,000.

Do the math. As of October 12, these 195,000 bitcoins would weigh about $16.2 billion. This is almost exactly the loss incurred by the public treasury since the peak. The auctions of yesterday have cost the taxpayer what the drop in bitcoin costs him today. The decree of March 2025 arrives a few years late.

The stock continues to grow without any purchases. On October 14, 2025, U.S. justice confiscated 127,271 BTC from the head of the Prince Group, arrested in Cambodia in January 2026, in the largest seizure in its history. The United States does not need a budget line to accumulate bitcoin, only a large enough criminal network to fall. These 127,271 bitcoins alone weigh more than $10 billion as of October 12, 2026.

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