House committee advances bill to codify Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Regulation & Gov ·
Legislation directing the Treasury to establish secure BTC storage cleared the House Financial Services Committee, moving Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve toward statutory footing.
The House Financial Services Committee advanced a bill that would codify the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve established under the Trump administration, requiring the Treasury to maintain secure storage of the government's bitcoin holdings, according to The Block. The vote marks a step toward turning an executive-level policy into permanent law rather than leaving the reserve dependent on the discretion of the current administration.
The measure passed on a party-line split, per Decrypt, underscoring that the effort to lock in a federal bitcoin reserve remains a partisan undertaking rather than one with broad bipartisan buy-in at this stage. Corroborating accounts of the same markup describe amendments that removed potential Federal Reserve funding routes for the reserve and weakened some of the bill's original transparency requirements, changes that alter how the reserve could be financed and how closely its holdings would be disclosed to the public.
The push builds on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that Trump established using forfeited assets, a structure crypto czar David Sacks said at the time would not involve taxpayer funds. Codifying that arrangement through legislation would give it a firmer legal basis than an executive action alone, potentially insulating the reserve from being unwound by a future administration without congressional action. Background material on the concept, compiled in Leviathan's explainer, notes that national strategic reserves sit alongside a broader pattern of states, corporations, and DeFi protocols treating BTC as a long-term reserve asset rather than a trading instrument.
The committee-level advance follows a string of related state and international moves, including El Salvador's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve surpassing 7,600 BTC and renewed legislative pushes in Florida for a state-level reserve, suggesting the federal effort is part of a wider trend rather than an isolated initiative. Multiple accounts of the same congressional action describe it consistently as a committee-level advance rather than a final passage, with seven distinct sources tracking developments in this cluster.
What remains unresolved is how the bill fares in a full House vote and, ultimately, the Senate, given the party-line nature of the committee vote. Also unclear is the practical effect of the amendments stripping Federal Reserve funding options and loosening transparency provisions, including how the reserve would be funded going forward and what disclosure the public and Congress would receive about its holdings.