House Committee Advances the American Reserve Modernization Act, Moving to Lock a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Into Law With a 20 Year Lockup
The American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 cleared the US House Committee on Financial Services on Wednesday in a 28 to 21 vote, advancing legislation that would convert President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve into federal statute, complete with a minimum 20-year holding requirement for the government’s coins.
The bill, H.R. 8957, would create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile inside the Department of the Treasury, both funded with Bitcoin and other digital assets acquired through criminal or civil forfeiture rather than open-market purchases. Representative Nicholas Begich, the Republican from Alaska who introduced the measure on May 21, framed the custody status quo as a national security problem.
We cannot allow Bitcoin held by the federal government to languish in fragmented and inconsistent custody, Begich said. It poses unacceptable cybersecurity risks and fails to give an adequate accounting of what the federal government actually owns.
What the Bill Would Actually Do
The legislation goes well beyond a symbolic hoard. Under ARMA, all federal agencies would be required to produce a complete accounting of digital assets currently held or controlled by the United States government, a figure that has never been authoritatively tallied. Arkham Intelligence estimates the government holds approximately 324,527 Bitcoin, worth about 24.7 billion USD at current prices near 76,323 USD, making the federal government one of the largest sovereign holders of the asset.
Transparency provisions form the second pillar. The Treasury would publish quarterly proof of reserve reports and commission third-party audits of the reserve, bringing governmental crypto custody to a standard that many private custodians do not publicly meet. The bill also directs a study of budget-neutral acquisition strategies for expanding the reserve, the same revenue-neutral framing that made the original executive order palatable to deficit-conscious lawmakers, since it contemplates growing the position without appropriations.
One provision is already drawing attention from state capitols: ARMA would allow individual states to store their Bitcoin in the Federal Reserve, effectively opening central bank custody infrastructure to state-level treasuries that have accumulated confiscated coins or purchased exposure.
Perhaps most notably for the wider industry, the bill affirmatively recognizes private ownership and self-custody rights, describing control of private keys as fundamental to the principles of financial sovereignty, privacy and personal liberty in the digital age. Language like that, in binding statute rather than agency guidance, is what industry lawyers have sought since the first enforcement-era debates over whether self-hosted wallets could be regulated as financial institutions.
The 20 Year Question
The minimum 20-year lockup is the bill’s boldest and most contested feature. It would statutorily prohibit the Treasury from selling reserve Bitcoin for two decades, insulating the position from future administrations that might view 300,000-plus coins as an irresistible fiscal asset. Advocates argue the lockup converts the reserve from a trading position into sovereign monetary infrastructure, comparable to gold holdings that Washington has largely left untouched for generations. Critics, including some fiscal conservatives, counter that a forced century-scale hold removes flexibility if the asset’s role in the financial system changes.
Bitcoin Policy Institute executive director Connor Brown called the committee approval a genuinely historic step for Bitcoin policy. Matt Cole, chief executive of Strive, had earlier described the bill as the single most important crypto legislation that can come out of Washington.
Where It Stands
The path forward remains steep. The bill must pass the full House and then the Senate, where the CLARITY Act’s market-structure failure this week, stalled after a cloture vote fell short, showed how narrow the margins are for major crypto legislation in an election year. ARMA benefits from a narrower footprint than market structure reform: it touches only federal holdings, does not allocate new regulatory authority between the SEC and CFTC, and rides the political visibility of the strategic reserve concept that Trump established by executive order in 2025.
That executive order remains the operative framework today, but orders can be reversed by a successor with a signature. Statute cannot, at least not easily, which is precisely the point advocates make. Every session the reserve sits in limbo is a session in which roughly 24.7 billion USD of national holdings remain in fragmented custody across the Justice Department, the Marshals Service and other agencies that liquidated seized coins for decades.
Committee passage means the legislation will get a floor vote scheduling conversation in the House, and its bipartisan 28 to 21 margin suggests room to pick up votes. Bitcoin at 76,323 USD, Ether at 2,436 USD and Solana at 99.94 USD barely reacted to the committee result, but the structural significance is larger than any intraday move: the United States is formally debating whether its sovereign Bitcoin should be governed the way its gold is, by law rather than by whim.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
forfeiture funded means zero market impact and zero cost basis. the gov literally cannot lose money on this trade, smartest structure they could have picked
20 year lockup is wild. gov buys the bottom now and the sale gets decided by whoever runs the country in 2046 lol
20 years is four halvings. whoever holds that stack in 2046 will not need to raise taxes ever again
four halvings puts block rewards near zero too. whoever manages that stack in 2046 is basically running a sovereign wealth fund off seized coins
the gov does not buy anything here tho. forfeiture coins only, zero open market purchases. re read H.R. 8957 before the 2046 jokes
correct, and thats the irony. the only bitcoin bill the fiscal hawks will vote for is one where the government acquires coins by locking up criminals
the 2046 sale decision gets made by politicians who are not even in office yet. honestly cleaner than congress voting on the stack every single cycle
28-21 vote, 20 year lockup, funded by forfeiture with zero open market buying. thats the detail people miss
324,527 BTC locked for two decades basically removes it from float. supply shock nobody prices in
324,527 BTC off float for 20 years and the 2046 sale clause hands the decision to whichever party runs treasury that year. supply shock with a political fuse
begich calling fragmented custody a national security risk is the argument that actually moves this bill imo
28 to 21 basically along party lines. H.R. 8957 still needs the Senate, and that is where the last reserve bill stalled out
Converting the executive order into statute is the part people are missing. EO can be reversed by the next president, law cannot
senate map is genuinely better this time, at least three republicans campaigning on crypto votes now vs the session that killed the last bill
agencies have never even tallied what they hold and we are legislating 20 year lockups on it. cart before the horse
agencies cant even tally what they hold, so the 20 year clock starts on an unaudited number. accounting first then lockup, its not complicated
a reserve funded entirely by forfeited coins means the US stack grows fastest when enforcement is busiest. weird incentive buried in H.R. 8957 nobody discusses
The enforcement incentive is the wild part. Every DOJ seizure literally grows the reserve, H.R. 8957 turns prosecutions into a savings plan.
The Digital Asset Stockpile sitting next to the reserve is the quiet part. A statutory drawer for forfeited altcoins means someone expects that seizure flow to keep growing.
right, and nobody defines what happens when that stockpile drawer fills with junk seized from scam cases. treasury running a lost and found for dead altcoins lol
a statutory drawer for seized alts is the government becoming the worst bag holder in crypto. holding shakedown tokens from 2019 scam cases until 2046 lol
28-21 in committee means nothing until the Senate calendar shows it. the last reserve bill died right there and the whip count hasnt moved since
senate graveyard take again. the whip count has actually moved a few votes since june, nobody updates their priors around here
senate calendar is the graveyard, spot on. the whole 20 year lockup fantasy assumes it survives a floor vote that hasnt even been scheduled
Sale decisions in 2046 for coins seized this decade means whoever inherits the stack inherits the cost basis question too. Nobody in that committee has thought about the accounting.
stepped up basis on coins the DOJ seized in 2019, the IRS is gonna need a whole manual for H.R. 8957 lol. whoever inherits the stack in 2046 inherits the paperwork too