President Donald Trump’s decision to establish what he called a “strategic Bitcoin reserve” within the federal government was met with celebration from the crypto sector early in his administration. The industry hailed it as further cementing the arrival of bitcoin as a mature asset, but a year has passed and there is still no reserve.
The Trump administration has carried out the initial task of accounting for the government’s crypto holdings, but the U.S. bitcoin reserve is no closer to being formed due to the result of one concept in the March 6, 2025 order: “the need for legislation to operationalize any aspect of this order.” Trump’s Treasury Department does not have the necessary authorizations to create specialized accounts. This requires action by Congress, the White House acknowledged, with Trump’s crypto adviser Patrick Witt saying the situation presents “new legal questions” that need to be answered.
Lawmakers such as Sen. Cynthia Lummis have introduced standby legislation, and the best current chance to pass it, according to people familiar with the legislative strategy, may be to enshrine it in the National Defense Authorization Act at the end of the year. But for that to happen, the Trump White House would likely need to re-embrace this issue as a priority cause.
Conjecture over the planning and funding of the reserve — and its cousin, a separate stockpile of digital assets also ordered by Trump to bring together all other types of cryptocurrency — has fluctuated. Last month, CNBC Head of Markets Jim Cramer started a rumor that Trump’s people were about to start filling the stash when BTC hits $60,000, despite lacking anywhere to put it or money to buy it.
The president’s crypto officials continue to demur when asked how much bitcoin the federal government actually owns, although some estimates put it at more than 300,000, totaling more than $20 billion.
The crypto industry’s main disappointment with Trump’s Bitcoin order was that it was not accompanied by any new government purchases of the leading crypto asset. Instead, he encouraged creative policies that would allow the government to increase the stockpile without spending taxpayer dollars.
Witt, the Trump adviser, would not share key 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 imply its contents would be released to mitigate any emergencies.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the halt to progress, but it further emphasizes that executive orders — a mainstay of the Trump administration — lack the power of law and often act only as a high-level directive from the president.
If Trump’s allies in Congress propose incorporating the reserves bill into the defense bill later this year, the legislative process would typically end in December. The must-pass funding bill is often used as what D.C. insiders like to call a “Christmas tree,” a piece of legislation on which they hang a wide array of unrelated bill ornaments, because the package needs to pass. If that’s the plan, it would happen during this session’s “lame duck” period, when some members of Congress have been removed from office or elected to retire — like Lummis — but have not yet reached their departure date.
Lummis’ own bitcoin reserve bill calls for a spending program for the United States to hold one million tokens, or about 5% of the eventual total supply. The Wyoming Republican, who serves as the inaugural chairman of the Senate Banking Committee’s inaugural Digital Assets Subcommittee, has so far only managed to get the bill through the committee, but the committee’s top priority is another crypto issue: passage of the Digital Assets Market Clarity Act.
Read more: Why doesn’t the US have a Bitcoin reserve yet?
