US strategic bitcoin reserves are on the way

Witt's announcement about the strategic reserve happened at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Vegas. The White House's crypto advisor Patrick Witt mentioned that we can expect a big update soon about Donald Trump's bitcoin reserve plans. As the head of the President's Digital Assets Advisory Council, Witt said his team is working hard to solidify the legal framework around this reserve. This news indicates that the US is moving quickly to make bitcoin a part of its national reserve assets.

The two most interesting sentences from the article for me are these. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but they literally say here that they plan to seize 1 million BTC in the next five years and make it a strategic reserve. Or maybe they copied a law from Brazil that has the same intentions?

Lol. No. The BTC strategic reserve was formed through an executive order signed by Donald Trump. And since this order could be withdrawn by another president, Congressman Nick Begich and Senator Cynthia Lummis put forward the bitcoin strategic reserve bill, formerly called the BITCOIN Act, but now called ARMA (American Reserves Modernization Act). It is this bill that proposes the acquisition of 1 million BTC for the next five years, through budget-neutral means like:

The idea of purchasing any type of crypto or for that matter any other sort of speculative asset eg stocks, pork belly futures, etc is a horrible idea. AFAIK, historically the US government has never done that and frankly no gov should. Applying seized speculative assets to a reserve fund (vs mandated periodic sales) is great idea. Buying them is fiscally irresponsible but also very much the pervue of Congress ergo the proposed bill.

US Bitcoin Reserve Statistics 2026 | Holdings, Policy & Facts https://theworlddata.com/us-bitcoin-reserve-statistics/ As of April 1, 2026, the United States holds approximately 328,372 BTC — worth roughly $25 billion at current prices — making it the world’s largest known sovereign Bitcoin holder by a considerable margin. That position is the product not of deliberate investment but of more than a decade of federal law enforcement success in seizing Bitcoin from criminal enterprises: the two largest single contributing seizures were the Silk Road darknet marketplace cases involving Ross Ulbricht (approximately 69,370 BTC seized in 2013) and the Bitfinex hack forfeiture in which Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were convicted, yielding approximately 94,636 BTC to the government in 2022 — the largest cryptocurrency seizure in US history at the time. __ There are still plenty of bitcoins in the world that could be confiscated for the US strategic reserve, so the US government has a good chance of accumulating 1 million bitcoins within 5 years

I'm aware that they can't exactly seize that many coins (unless they manage to do something with Saylor coins), but if they haven't invested a single cent so far, I doubt they'll invest anything in the future. Especially after the Trumpists lose the next elections (we hope), and hopefully a man or woman is elected who will not be at a similar level of mental chaos. Why pay when you can get it for free? They write the laws, enforce them, and can do whatever they want. However, they can only take what is within their reach, which means that all those who practice non-custodial storage of their private keys can sleep peacefully.

All investments that a government can make are equally speculative. There's no investment that is not speculative. A government spending public money to directly own equity in industries such as energy or transportation is as speculative as using public money to buy bitcoin and hold it. There's some doubt whether the US government buys 1 million bitcoin, when BlackRock, Strategy and other funds buy so aggressively. Maybe there won't be any million bitcoin left for the US government when the bill starts being implemented.

Lol, you bet. You wouldn't put it past them, would you. People who store their funds in custodial wallets or in centralized coins like usdt that can be frozen in any wallet should look out, lol. They might just be coming for your coins if they find anything 'suspicious' about it. And who decides what's suspicious eh?

What happens to seized stolen coins? Do they also end up in the strategic reserve, or are they returned to the victims?

Okay, so they’ve just repeated what was said last year, which was itself a repeat of what was said in late 2024. We’ll have to see if this actually happens, but it feels like Groundhog Day. It’s clear that Bitcoin hasn’t been a priority for Trump. We'll see if the bill to purchase 1 million Bitcoins gets passed some—it's not a matter of a government decision, and it's Groundhog Day all over again. For a law like this to be passed, it first has to be formally introduced in the Senate, then it goes to a committee, and then (assuming it makes it past the committee—since many bills don't pass that stage—it goes to the House, and so on). I don't see why there's excitement about announcing something that's already been announced, re-announced, and—almost two years later—hasn't even taken its first step yet.

Prince Group (~127,271BTC), Silk Road (~69,370BTC), Samourai Wallet (all in reserve), the Bitfinex hack (only a portion of these funds will be returned to the exchange), and so on—these are cases from 2025–2026. The custodial wallet is Coinbase Prime under a 5-year government contract. Compensation is typically paid in dollars at the time of the theft, not at the current cryptocurrency exchange rate.

So you're saying the US government's strategic reserve missed the memo on "not your keys, not your coins"? What's next, storing their gold at U-Haul Storage?

I honestly doubt that the ARMA Bill would make it past all the required stages. It is still in its 'introduction' stage, so we are very far away from anything. And just looking at the roadblocks the Clarity Act is currently up against in the Senate gives us an idea of what it takes to get these things sorted out, takes a lot. For whatever it is worth, the ARMA bill that's introduced to convert executive order to official federal law proposes that the 1 million BTC that would be acquired over a 5 year period would be stored in self custodial storage facilities.

In my opinion, if the government determines Bitcoin as a US national reserve asset, it is a positive step and policy for the future, especially the US. We know that Bitcoin can create economic stability or can also be used as a hedge against inflation. Considering that the global economy is currently unstable, if you look at it legally, this is a good step or strategy to make. What's more, the US government is proposing a bill (American Reserves Modernization Act) that can be fully controlled by the US Treasury Department, especially if Bitcoin gets recognition as a state reserve asset, I am sure that if this situation is carried out by the US, it is very likely that it will have an impact on other countries, they will create a bill like the US.

No, not the U.S. government. The bill is proposed by Congressman Nick Begich and Senator Cynthia Lummis . United States president, Donald Trump already signed the executive order to establish a BTC strategic reserve in the U.S., though this has yet to be implemented. It now raises the question if the delay is actually due to legal and regulatory reasons or if Trump does not consider BTC a priority like he did during the campaign.

Depending on who you're asking, banks are the government, so a private bank holding the bitcoin does not change the fact that the government custodies it. Who owns the gold? Is it really at Fort Knox?   A good theory is that Strategy and BlackRock need to stack at least 4 million bitcoin, before the US government considers it a "priority".

I understand the irony in comparing the Coinbase crypto exchange to warehouses for storing old furniture and other junk, but storage has its costs, too. Coinbase likely offered more favorable terms to the US government, and its wallets weren't hacked. They did have hacking incidents, but the hackers targeted their clients, not the exchange itself.

I'm curious how much they pay for this. There's no fundamental reason to charge a percentage, but I can't imagine they charge the same for 100k coins as they do for just 1 coin. After all, it's the government and they have deep pockets. So how much do they charge? EU has all kinds of public bid requirements, which in the Netherlands now lead to the tax agency switching bank account. That means literally everyone in the country has to change something just because government found a slightly cheaper deal elsewhere. If the US has something similar, they'll have to more their strategic reserve to a different provider on a regular basis. That sounds risky

US Marshals Service picks Coinbase to custody its assets as part of a $32.5 million contract https://www.theblock.co/post/302924/us-marshals-service-picks-coinbase-to-custody-its-assets-as-part-of-a-32-5-million-contract __ I have experience working with government contracts in my country. With such contracts, offering a low price isn't enough; you need multiple licenses, including the most complex license for working with state secrets, which is very difficult to obtain. In other countries, this may be called something different, but the government has the leverage to select a reliable company.

That's a lot of money for something you could just write down on a piece of paper