Bitcoin Reserve Bill Clears House Panel 28-21, Locks Seized BTC for 20 Years

House Committee Votes to Put the Bitcoin Reserve Into Law

The US government’s plan to keep the bitcoin it seizes, rather than sell it, moved a step closer to becoming permanent law on Wednesday.

The House Financial Services Committee voted 28-21 to advance H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026, Cointelegraph reported. All 28 votes in favour came from Republicans and all 21 votes against came from Democrats.

The vote matters because the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve currently rests on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March 2025. An executive order can be reversed by a future president with a signature. A law cannot be undone that easily.

What the American Reserve Modernization Act Would Do

The bill, introduced in May by Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska) with Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) as co-lead, would formally create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile inside the Treasury Department.

Its headline provision is a lockup. According to the committee’s amended bill text, Treasury would have to hold all bitcoin deposited in the reserve, “regardless of acquisition method, for not less than 20 years from the date of enactment.”

The text also requires an annual proof-of-reserve report, directs every federal agency to disclose its bitcoin holdings within 60 days of the law taking effect, and establishes a program allowing individual states to store their own bitcoin in segregated accounts within the reserve.

The scale is significant. Arkham Intelligence estimates the US government holds 324,527 BTC, worth about $24.7 billion, according to Cointelegraph.

A Party-Line Vote With Sharp Words on Both Sides

Supporters framed the bill as sound financial management. “We cannot allow Bitcoin to be held by the federal government to languish in fragmented and inconsistent custody,” Begich said.

Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), whose substitute version of the bill was adopted before the final vote, went further. “This is a smart financial strategy that will increase our reserve strength while also reducing our deficit,” he said, The Block reported.

Democrats were unconvinced. “I don’t think anyone believes that bitcoin is critical to the U.S. economy,” said Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), who raised concerns about the asset’s volatility.

Ranking Member Maxine Waters offered an amendment that would have barred the president, vice president, members of Congress and their families from holding controlling stakes in digital assets. It failed on the same 28-21 party line.

How Seized Bitcoin Ends Up in a Government Reserve

For beginners, the key word in this bill is forfeiture. When a court rules that money or property is tied to a crime, it can order those assets handed over to the government. That process is called criminal or civil asset forfeiture, and over the years it has left federal agencies holding a large amount of bitcoin from criminal cases.

Historically, seized assets like these could be sold off. Under this bill, bitcoin that lands in the reserve would instead be locked away: it could not be sold, swapped, auctioned or pledged as collateral for two decades.

That makes the reserve closer to a long-term savings account than a trading desk. For now, its size would depend on what law enforcement recovers, not on what the market does to the bitcoin price, which hovered around $76,000 as the committee voted.

The Buying Question Is Still Unanswered

What the bill does not do is authorise the government to buy bitcoin. An earlier Senate proposal, the BITCOIN Act, discussed acquiring up to 1 million BTC over five years. The Begich bill dropped that target when it was introduced in May.

Instead, Treasury and Commerce would have 180 days to study “budget-neutral” ways to grow the reserve. The text states that nothing in it authorises borrowing, pledging government assets as collateral, “new taxation, or deficit spending for the purpose of acquiring Bitcoin.”

Steil’s substitute also removed earlier funding ideas that would have drawn on Federal Reserve resources, according to Decrypt, narrowing the bill further.

Can the Bill Survive a Senate That Just Blocked CLARITY?

The committee vote is only the first hurdle. H.R. 8957 still needs to pass the full House, clear the Senate in identical form and be signed by the president before any of it takes effect.

The Senate is the harder test. Only a day earlier, the chamber blocked the CLARITY Act 49-50, showing how thin the margin for crypto legislation remains. A bill that passed committee without a single Democratic vote may struggle to find the bipartisan support the Senate typically requires.

No Senate companion bill has passed so far, so even a strong House vote could leave the reserve waiting on the other chamber. Readers can track the crypto news today as that process unfolds.

A Reserve Built on Permanence, Not Purchases

The most telling detail in this bill is what it gave up. By dropping the 1 million BTC target and the more creative funding ideas, its backers traded ambition for durability: the bill is less about buying bitcoin and more about stopping the government from selling what it already holds.

That is a smaller promise, but a longer-lasting one. A 20-year hold written into statute would signal that Washington treats bitcoin as a strategic asset rather than seized contraband. Whether that signal survives the Senate is the open question, and the 28-21 split suggests the answer may depend less on bitcoin itself than on whether any Democrats can be brought on board.