White House Signals Imminent Move to Lock In Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

Patrick Witt, White House digital asset adviser, said the official Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could become law within weeks, and authorise up to 1 million BTC in acquisitions.

Witt appeared on a Bitcoin (BTC) 2026 policy panel in Las Vegas with Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno. Event coverage said Witt previewed a “big announcement” from the executive branch as officials work through legal and operational questions around the reserve.

The president signed the strategic bitcoin reserve executive order last year, and we’ve gone to work in figuring out exactly the machinations necessary and legal interpretations that we need to get that right and solidify that and protect the digital assets, specifically bitcoin that we have on the government balance sheet.

Patrick Witt, White House digital asset adviser.

The reserve already exists, but only as an executive policy, “created” more than a year ago on March 6, 2025. 

The order directed the Treasury to establish custodial accounts known as the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, funded with government BTC finally forfeited through criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings or civil money penalties.

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Executive Order Framework

The order separated Bitcoin from other digital assets by creating a United States Digital Asset Stockpile for non-BTC holdings. It also stated that government BTC deposited into the reserve should not be sold and should instead be maintained as reserve assets of the United States.

Treasury and Commerce were directed to develop strategies for acquiring additional government BTC, provided those strategies were budget-neutral and imposed no incremental cost on taxpayers. 

Agencies were also required to review their authority to transfer government BTC and report digital asset holdings to Treasury and the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets.

That structure gives the administration a reserve framework, but it remains vulnerable to later executive action. The White House order itself asked the Treasury to evaluate legal and investment considerations, including whether legislation would be needed to operationalise or manage the reserve.

Lummis has argued that Congress should codify the reserve rather than leave the policy to executive discretion. 

Her office said the legislation would create a decentralised network of secure Treasury-operated Bitcoin vaults and implement a 1-million-unit Bitcoin purchase program over time, equal to roughly 5% of the total BTC supply.

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