U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is shown to hold bitcoin worth up to $65,000. Bitcoin makes up a limited share of his overall assets compared with cash or traditional financial products.

According to Hegseth's 2025 annual financial disclosure cited by blockchain media outlet Decrypt on Sept. 25, he reported holding bitcoin in a Coinbase wallet. The bitcoin holdings were listed in two entries, one in the range of $15,001 to $50,000 and another in the range of $1,001 to $15,000. Combined, the bitcoin holdings total about $16,000 to $65,000. The income type from the asset was listed as capital gains.

The disclosed documents did not separately confirm any bitcoin purchases or sales exceeding $1,000 during 2025. The financial disclosure requires specific reporting only for transactions above a certain amount, so it was not possible to verify whether there were trades of $1,000 or less.

In his overall assets, cash and traditional investments were far larger than bitcoin. Hegseth reported holding more than $1 million in funds in one of his bank accounts. Two other bank accounts were also included in the disclosure.

The couple's retirement accounts held investment assets totaling $2.05 million to $4.35 million. They included various investment products such as the Invesco QQQ Trust and Avantis-related funds. Hegseth also reported transactions involving sales of individual stocks including Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.

Hegseth's bitcoin holdings are drawing attention as the personal asset details of a senior official in the Trump administration, which has stressed a crypto-friendly policy stance. The disclosure alone makes it difficult to judge Hegseth's personal crypto investment preferences or any link to policy decisions.

The gap is larger when compared with President Trump's own crypto-related assets and income. In his 2025 financial disclosure, Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto businesses involving his family. That included income related to World Liberty Financial and proceeds from sales of the Trump memecoin.

Reuters, through a separate analysis, estimated that the Trump family earned about $2.3 billion in profit from 4 major crypto businesses by the end of April 2026. The analysis covered World Liberty Financial, the Trump memecoin, ALT5 Sigma and American Bitcoin.

As the Trump administration's crypto policies and the family's digital asset businesses expand at the same time, debate continues over potential conflicts of interest. Critics have raised concerns that the Trump family could profit economically from crypto businesses while also influencing related policies, and the White House has denied such conflict-of-interest claims.

The disclosure shows that Hegseth directly holds bitcoin and also indicates that bitcoin does not account for a large share of his overall assets compared with traditional assets such as cash and retirement accounts. Whether there is any link between Hegseth's personal crypto investing and the Trump administration's policy stance requires separate confirmation.