White House Bitcoin Reserve Talk

A White House crypto adviser said the administration could spell out its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve plans within two months. (coingape.com) Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, made the comment in an interview published April 17 by Thinking Crypto. Other outlets that summarized the interview said Witt tied the timeline to work already underway inside the executive branch. (thinkingcrypto.com, tokenpost.com) A bitcoin reserve is a government stockpile of bitcoin, the same cryptocurrency network whose code caps total supply at 21 million coins. The White House’s March 6, 2025 executive order said the reserve would be funded with bitcoin already forfeited to the federal government in criminal or civil cases. (whitehouse.gov) That order did more than float an idea. It directed the Treasury secretary to set up an office to administer the reserve, required agencies within 30 days to review whether they could transfer government-held bitcoin into it, and said bitcoin placed in the reserve “shall not be sold.” (whitehouse.gov) The reserve sits inside a wider Trump administration push on digital assets. A January 23, 2025 executive order declared it U.S. policy to support digital assets and blockchain technology, promote dollar-backed stablecoins, and bar a U.S. central bank digital currency. (whitehouse.gov) The White House has also framed crypto as part of its broader economic agenda. Its current crypto policy page urges the federal government to “operationalize” Trump’s promise to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.” (whitehouse.gov) What has lagged is execution. CoinDesk reported on March 6, 2026 that the reserve order had “languish[ed]” for a year as officials waited on congressional action, and Witt said in January that legal questions across agencies were slowing the process. (coindesk.com, cointelegraph.com) Congress has parallel proposals on the table. Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced S.954, the BITCOIN Act of 2025, on March 11, 2025, and Representative Nick Begich introduced H.R.2032 the same day; both bills would establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in statute, but Congress.gov still lists them as introduced. (congress.gov, congress.gov) A White House announcement would not mean the government is suddenly buying fresh bitcoin on the open market. The March 2025 order was narrower: move forfeited bitcoin into a federal reserve account, hold it there, and sort out the legal machinery later. (whitehouse.gov) The next test is whether the White House issues a policy blueprint by mid-June 2026 and whether it answers the unresolved question Witt has raised for months: which agencies can actually move the government’s bitcoin into one reserve. (coingape.com, cointelegraph.com)