U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Push Returns to Congress as White House Readies Executive Move

On Thursday, Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) and co-lead Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026, or ARMA, a bill that would establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile inside the U.S. Treasury, lock all federally held bitcoin for a minimum of 20 years, and authorize the Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 BTC per year for five years — a cumulative target of one million coins, or roughly 5% of global supply.

The bill arrived with 18 original co-sponsors, with Golden the sole Democrat alongside a Republican slate that includes Reps. Buddy Carter, Ben Cline, Burgess Owens, Mike Lawler, and Matt Van Epps. It builds directly on the earlier BITCOIN Act, introduced by Begich and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) in July 2024 and updated in March 2025, and is designed to translate President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order into durable law.

The political logic is straightforward. Executive orders survive only as long as the administrations that sign them, and the reserve in its current form could be undone by any future president with a stroke of the pen. A federal statute is harder to unwind, requiring committee markup, floor votes in both chambers, and presidential assent. Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, has been blunt about that vulnerability, describing the executive order as “very reversible” in a Sunday interview with podcaster Scott Melker and characterizing ARMA as “Version 2” of the BITCOIN Act framework.

A Hard 20-Year Lock and a Debt-Reduction Trigger

Two provisions distinguish ARMA from earlier drafts. The first is the 20-year minimum holding period, which would apply to every coin transferred into the reserve, including the approximately 328,372 BTC the federal government already controls — a position currently worth around $25.5 billion at prevailing market prices and the largest known sovereign bitcoin holding in the world. The bulk of that stack was accumulated through criminal forfeitures linked to the Silk Road takedown and the 2022 recovery of bitcoin from the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

The second is the disposition rule. Under ARMA, the only authorized use for sale proceeds is reducing the national debt, which crossed $39 trillion on Wednesday. The bill also stipulates that acquisitions must be budget-neutral, meaning the reserve cannot be built using new appropriations or taxpayer-funded purchases. That language echoes earlier proposals — most notably Lummis’s — that would fund accumulation through revaluation of Treasury-held gold certificates or reallocation of existing reserve assets.

Begich framed the underlying rationale in market terms when speaking to Fox Business on Thursday. “When you look at gold, it is the dominant precious metal reserve,” he said. “When you look at bitcoin, it represents about 60% of all market cap for the entire crypto space.” Golden, the bill’s lead Democrat, offered a narrower argument focused on existing federal holdings: “The U.S. is already one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world. But Congress has never set a federal policy on what to do with that asset.”

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, which has lobbied for the reserve since 2023, endorsed the package as a step toward professionalizing federal custody of digital assets — a process that has been considerably less orderly than the headline numbers suggest.

The White House’s Custody Problem

Running alongside the legislative push is an executive-branch workstream that has, by Witt’s own account, occupied his office for the better part of a year. At CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on May 6, Witt told attendees that an announcement on the reserve was coming “in the next few weeks” and described the work to date as a “breakthrough” on the legal and custodial structure required to consolidate scattered government holdings.

The picture he painted was less than reassuring. “We’ve heard stories and confirmed some of them of cold wallets that were being stored in drawers of desks in various agencies,” Witt said, citing a recent exploit involving digital assets held by the U.S. Marshals Service as the kind of incident the new framework is designed to prevent. Trump’s March 2025 executive order halted what Witt described as “fire sale” liquidations under the previous administration and directed agencies to begin auditing what they actually held — an exercise that has surfaced inconsistencies and security gaps that the Treasury will need to address before any unified reserve can be declared operational.

Witt has been careful to note that crypto seized in active legal proceedings sits in pending status until forfeiture is finalized, with assets potentially returned to victims through restitution before any transfer to the reserve. That carve-out is likely to keep portions of the existing federal stack in limbo regardless of how quickly Treasury and the White House move on the operational framework.

Market Context

Bitcoin has traded in a range between roughly $77,200 and $78,100 through the week, with BNC reporting a spot price of $77,447 on Friday morning in New York — down sharply from the asset’s recent high near $82,500 and well off the $99,000-plus levels touched late last year. The legislative news produced no obvious bid, with traders apparently focused on a more hawkish Federal Reserve tone and broader risk-off positioning across crypto markets.

Bitcoin is down 2% today, source: BNC

That muted response reflects a familiar pattern in reserve-related news cycles: markets have repeatedly priced in the existence of a reserve and repeatedly discounted the timeline for active accumulation. ARMA does not change that calculus on its own. The bill still needs committee markups, floor votes, a Senate companion — the closest of which is the Lummis-Cassidy Mined in America Act introduced on March 30 — and a presidential signature before any of its acquisition mechanics activate.

The broader contest is between rhetoric and balance-sheet behavior. The U.S. position of roughly 328,000 BTC remains the largest known state holding, followed by China at an estimated 190,000 BTC, the United Kingdom at around 61,000 BTC, and El Salvador at 6,174 BTC. None of those governments has yet declared a formal reserve policy. If ARMA passes — or if the White House moves first with an executive framework Witt’s office has spent months preparing — the U.S. would become the first sovereign nation to formally treat bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset on the model of gold or petroleum stockpiles.

Witt’s public timetable points to an announcement within weeks. Begich’s bill is now on the calendar. Whether either translates into actual Treasury accumulation before the midterms remains the open question for the market — and the one most likely to determine whether the reserve is remembered as a structural shift or a slow-walked promise.