Executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets Patrick Witt said US officials are actively examining how Venezuela’s Maduro regime was financed, including whether any value sits in Bitcoin and “digital assets,” as speculation mounted earlier this month that recent Venezuela-linked actions may have surfaced a large Bitcoin cache. The comments stop short of confirming any seizure, but they place Bitcoin explicitly inside an ongoing national-security review.
White House Adviser Confirms Bitcoin Investigation“Obviously, developing situation down there, still working through it, a lot of national security equities there,” Witt said. “So folks are talking, they’re looking at the situation overall, how the Maduro regime was financed and where some of those assets, whether it’s on the oil side, actual physical commodities or digital assets maybe. So I can’t comment on anything there as of now, but there’s a number of folks in the national security apparatus engaged and looking into that.”
The key takeaway for markets is procedural rather than tactical: Witt did not validate any claim that bitcoin or other tokens were seized, but he did confirm that crypto is being considered alongside commodity-linked value as investigators map financing channels.
Skepticism has also centered on the lack of traceable starting points. Fortune quoted Nansen principal research analyst Aurelie Barthere saying the Project Brazen report “does not mention any addresses as a starting point, making it difficult to verify” the speculation.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $89,285.
