PubKey’s Washington, DC opening yesterday would normally be filed under Bitcoin culture: a BTC-centric bar and meetup space planting a flag a few blocks from the institutions that write and enforce US financial policy. Instead, the launch became a market-relevant moment after Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research Alex Thorn posted photos from the event that show US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in attendance.
Bitcoin-aligned commentators read the presence as overtly constructive. Analyst MacroScope (@MacroScope17) observed, “The Treasury Secretary was at tonight’s opening of PubKey DC. In this type of market, signals like this don’t matter much. Eventually traders look back and realize it mattered.”
Strive chief investment officer Ben Werkman framed it as a hindsight moment in real time, saying, “Having the Secretary of the Treasury at the Pubkey DC launch seems like a moment I could easily look back on and say ‘wow, it was all so obvious’.” Thorn replied, “agreed this is unabashedly bullish,” while Nakamoto’s vice president of investor relations Steven Lubka wrote, “The Treasury Secretary of the United States is at Pubkey. This is the sign you have been waiting for.”
None of those posts constitute policy, but they reflect a shared interpretation: a sitting Treasury Secretary showing up at a Bitcoin venue in DC is not a neutral optic in a cycle where state posture toward BTC is being repriced globally.
Yet the bullish optic lands amid a notable policy vacuum. President Trump’s March 6, 2025 executive order created a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, directing agencies to report their digital-asset holdings and transfer forfeited BTC into a reserve that “shall not be sold.”
Put simply, Bessent at PubKey DC is bullish as a social signal, not as a confirmed policy pivot. It suggests that Bitcoin’s legitimacy inside the US fiscal establishment is deepening to the point where the Treasury Secretary can engage with BTC-native spaces without treating them as political risk. But until Treasury releases a full reserve accounting and clarifies whether any lawful budget-neutral acquisition route exists, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve remains more intent than instrument. Markets can price symbolism quickly; they will ultimately need numbers.
At press time, BTC traded at $85,670
