Sometimes, cryptocurrency news outlets and crypto X influencers bring up questionable evaluations of Bitcoin owned by different countries. Some of these evaluations are based on outdated or misinterpreted information, and others stem from unsupported claims made by the state authorities. The figures of 200,000 BTC held by the U.S. and 46,000 held by Ukraine, or the claims that El Salvador is buying 1 BTC every day, are disputable or even misleading.
Summary
- Most publications bring up 200,000 BTC or 198,000 BTC as the amount held by the U.S. The federal court ruled to return around half of this amount to the original owner. The U.S. Marshals Service confirmed it has only 29,000 BTC. The audit is pending.
- According to a popular Bitcoin dashboard platform, BitBo, Ukraine owns 46,351 BTC. Sometimes, various media use this data in their posts and articles. In fact, this figure represents the holdings declared by Ukrainian officials in 2021.
- El Salvador President Nayib Bukele claims the country is growing its BTC reserves by buying 1 BTC per day. These claims are contradicted by the IMF review released in July. The IMF, alongside two Salvadorian officials, claims that the country stopped buying BTC in February 2025.
Does the U.S. hold 200,000 BTC?
According to on-chain data, the U.S. government’s Bitcoin holdings amount to 198,021 bitcoins. This amount is circulating across the crypto space, often without reservations as if the U.S. government was the true owner of these funds.
On Mar. 6, 2025, President Donald Trump established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve via executive order. According to Arkham Intelligence, on that date, the U.S. agencies held 198,109 BTC. According to the executive order, the U.S. agencies holding bitcoins provide full accounting to the Secretary of the Treasury and the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets. Trump gave them 30 days to do so. The results of this accounting were not published.
Following the order signing, White House’s AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks published an X post mentioning 200,000 BTC as an approximate amount held by the U.S. On Jul. 20, 2025, Cointelegraph named 207,189 BTC as the amount held by the U.S. However, on Sep. 28, the publication’s X account released a post containing an estimation aligning with the Arkham Intelligence and BitBo data.
On Jul. 16, 2025, the crypto space was struck by the news–the U.S. Marshals Service holds only 29,000 BTC. The data was obtained from the agency by journalist Lola Leetz via FOIA request.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis and many others in the crypto space, including several influencers, assumed that the U.S. government had sold the rest of its BTC holdings. However, things are not so dramatic. In fact, the U.S. Marshals Service holds forfeited bitcoins, while several other agencies have seized bitcoins. Together, they may sum up to around 200,000 BTC.
The thing with seized assets is that they are held only until the court decision. Usually, they serve as evidence in criminal cases. For instance, over 94,000 of 200,000 BTC are bitcoins seized from hackers who stole them from the Bitfinex exchange in 2016. The federal court already ruled that these bitcoins must be returned to Bitfinex.
While the U.S. may actually hold 200,000 BTC, as the on-chain data suggests, it doesn’t mean that the USG is the owner of these funds. The U.S. owns at least 29,000 BTC. If we use the 200,000 BTC figure, we should consider that at least half of this amount is held temporarily. It casts a shadow on the popular conception that the U.S. is leading in the amount of BTC on its balance sheets.
Does Ukraine hold 46,000 BTC?
The Cointelegraph article mentioned above claims that Ukraine holds 46,351 BTC. “Much of it donated during conflict,” a commentary reads. The same figure occurs in the BitBo list of the countries having the biggest amounts of Bitcoin. The evaluation and the reference to donations are repeated in several identical lists of BTC-richest countries circulating on social media.
Both the number and the claim about donations represent true information. The problem is that these pieces of data shouldn’t be mixed. Therefore, claims that Ukraine holds 46,000 BTC collected through donations are simply not true.
There are different evaluations of the BTC amount held by Ukraine. According to the latest Arkham Intelligence data, Ukraine holds 10.14 BTC. In December 2024, several media outlets estimated that Ukraine held 186 BTC.
As the crypto is collected to fund military and humanitarian needs, Ukraine is believed to spend donated bitcoins, not accumulate them for long-term possession. It explains why the amount is relatively humble.
As for the 46,351 BTC evaluation, it doesn’t represent Ukraine’s government holdings in 2025. Rather, it is the combined Bitcoin holdings declared by the country’s public servants in 2021. It means that the number represents personal holdings Ukrainian officials had in 2020. So, this amount doesn’t have anything to do with the donations made since 2022 and doesn’t represent the BTC holdings of the Ukrainian government.
Is El Salvador buying bitcoins in 2025?
El Salvador is a special country in the Bitcoin timeline. It was the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. It happened in 2021. The move aimed to provide Salvadorans with financial inclusion and solve the problem of the unbanked population. However, most residents didn’t show trust and interest in Bitcoin. Poor infrastructure and premature adoption turned the bold move into a flop.
In December 2024, the government clinched the deal with the International Monetary Fund. El Salvador was tasked to discontinue Bitcoin’s legal tender status, among other requirements, in exchange for a $1.4 billion loan.
After coming to an agreement with the IMF, El Salvador started to buy 1 BTC per day. This strategy didn’t satisfy the IMF, which saw Bitcoin as a risky asset for El Salvador. Despite that, the country’s president unchanged since 2019, Nayib Bukele, has continued to make claims about daily Bitcoin purchases. The Bitcoin Office of El Salvador reports BTC purchases several times a week.
These purchases are often referred to in the crypto media and on social media. However, the IMF review released on Jul. 15, 2025, suggests that El Salvador stopped buying bitcoins in February. Instead, El Salvador keeps on tossing bitcoins bought earlier between the state-owned addresses. Allegedly, these actions are presented as the new purchases.
The review contains statements from the President of the Central Bank of El Salvador, Douglas Pablo Rodríguez Fuentes, and the Minister of Finance, Jerson Rogelio Posada Molina. They confirm that El Salvador has not bought bitcoins since February, except for a few instances in March.
According to the Bitcoin Office website, by February, El Salvador had bought 6,055 BTC. If the IMF review and the statements from Fuentes and Molina are correct, El Salvador didn’t buy much more.
As of Sep. 29, the Arkham Intelligence suggests that El Salvador holds 6,335 BTC. This data is in line with the claims by the Bitcoin Office.
On the one hand, this situation raises questions about the accuracy of the data presented by the Bitcoin Office. On the other hand, it’s not clear why Arkham Intelligence data do not coincide with the IMF claims.
Examples of El Salvador and the U.S. illustrate that on-chain data is often a starting point of search for truth, not the destination. The case with Ukraine’s BTC holdings marks how different the views are on what is perceived as the government’s holdings. While each of the evaluations mentioned in the article has some ground, taking them at face value may not be correct.
Source: https://crypto.news/why-are-the-claims-about-bitcoin-holdings-of-certain-countries-often-misleading/