US should fund Bitcoin strategic reserve with tariff surplus: Author

The United States government can purchase more Bitcoin () for the US strategic reserve through funneling portions of the tariff receipt surplus into BTC acquisitions, according to Adam Livingston, author of “The Bitcoin Age and The Great Harvest.”

Livingston taking a portion of the surpluses every month and funneling that into secure, cold storage BTC that is not traded, staked, sold, rehypothecated, used to fund programs or secure loans, or lent out for yield. He said:

“As of July, we’ve collected $135.7 billion in customs duties — double last year’s pace. Let me repeat that we’re sitting on a $70 billion surplus from tariffs, and we haven’t even finished the fiscal year.”

That Surplus is unallocated. It’s not pre-spent. It’s not tied to Medicare, entitlements, or debt service. It’s just floating, waiting, looking for a productive use case, ” Livingston continued.

The proposal to fund the with the tariff surplus could be a path for the government to buy more BTC under US President Trump’s executive order, that additional BTC can only be acquired through . 

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Scott Bessent, secretary of the United States Treasury Department, said on Thursday that the US government would for the strategic reserve

“We’re not going to be buying that, but we are going to use confiscated assets and continue to build that up,” Bessent Fox Business.

However, Bessent later that day, clarifying that the US government is still  “” to accruing more of the digital currency.

Several budget-neutral strategies have been proposed, including , which are currently at just $42.22 per troy ounce, while gold trades on spot markets for about $3,335 per ounce.

Other budget-neutral avenues include reallocating some of the government’s other existing reserve assets, selling off oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, for example, to acquire more BTC.

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