President Donald Trump’s move to establish what he called a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” in the federal government was met with celebration by the crypto sector at the start of his administration. The industry cheered it as further cementing bitcoin’s arrival as a mature asset, but a year has passed and there is still no reserve.
Trump’s administration did the initial job of accounting for the government’s crypto holdings, but the US bitcoin reserve is no closer to being formed due to the result of a concept in the March 6, 2025 order: “the need for any legislation to operationalize any aspect of this order.” Trump’s Treasury Secretary lacks the necessary authorizations to set up the specialized accounts. That requires action from Congress, the White House has acknowledged, and Trump’s crypto adviser, Patrick Witt, says the situation presents “new legal questions” that need to be answered.
Lawmakers such as Sen. Cynthia Lummis have floated the reserve legislation, and the current best chance for passage, according to people familiar with the legislative strategy, may be to get it into the National Defense Authorization Act by the end of the year. But the Trump White House would likely have to re-adopt the issue as a priority to make that happen.
Conjecture about the planning and financing of the reserve — and its cousin, a separate repository of digital assets also commissioned by Trump to house all other forms of cryptocurrency — has ebbed and flowed. Last month, CNBC market chief Jim Cramer floated a rumor that Trump’s people were ready to start filling the reserve when BTC hit $60,000, despite the lack of a place to put it or money to buy it.
The president’s crypto officials continue to balk when asked how much bitcoin the US authorities actually hold, although some estimates put it at more than 300,000, totaling more than $20 billion.
The biggest disappointment from the crypto sector over Trump’s bitcoin order was that it did not come with any new government purchases of the leading crypto asset. Instead, it encouraged creative policies that would allow the government to increase inventories without spending taxpayers’ money.
Witt, Trump’s adviser, has been unwilling to share the leading ideas for getting more bitcoin for the fund, which is meant to be held for long-term appreciation, not technically as a strategic reserve that would suggest its contents would be released to mitigate any emergencies.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the ongoing shutdown, but it further underscores that executive orders — a mainstay of Trump’s administration — do not have the force of law and often serve as little more than high-level direction from the president.
If Trump’s congressional allies come up with a proposal for the reserve law to be tucked into the defense bill later this year, that legislative process usually ends in December. The must-pass funding bill is often used as what DC insiders like to call a “Christmas tree,” a piece of legislation on which they hang a wide variety of unrelated bill ornaments because the package must pass. If that’s the plan, it would happen during this session’s “lame duck” period, the time when some members of Congress will have been voted out of office or chosen to retire — like Lummis — but have not yet reached their departure date.
Lummis’ own bitcoin reserve bill calls for a spending program that gets the United States to a holding of one million tokens — about 5% of the total eventual supply. The Wyoming Republican, who is the acting chairman of the Senate Banking Committee’s first subcommittee on digital assets, has so far only managed to get the legislation through the committee, but the panel’s top priority is another crypto matter: the passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
Read more: Why doesn’t the US have a Bitcoin reserve yet?
