Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) reintroduced legislation Tuesday to create a bitcoin strategic reserve, seeking to codify President Trump’s executive order last week establishing a reserve.
The bill, which Lummis first introduced last year, would direct the government to purchase 1 million Bitcoins over five years that would be transferred into a “decentralized network” of storage facilities.
The funds for the bitcoin purchases would come from “diversifying existing funds” in the Federal Reserve system, according to a press release.
The first $6 billion in remittances from reserve banks would be set aside each year between 2025 and 2029 to build up the reserve. It would also rely on the Fed’s gold certificates.
“Bitcoin is not simply a technological opportunity, but a national imperative for America’s continued financial leadership in the 21st century,” Lummis said in a statement.
“By transforming the president’s visionary executive action into enduring law, we can ensure that our nation will harness the full potential of digital innovation to address our national debt while maintaining our competitive edge in the global economy,” she continued.
Lummis’s legislation, which is cosponsored by Republican Sens. Jim Justice (W.Va.), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and Bernie Moreno (Ohio), is slightly different from Trump’s proposal.
Trump’s executive order seeks to establish a reserve based on bitcoin seized by federal law enforcement. It would separately create a digital asset stockpile, consisting of digital assets other than bitcoin similarly forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings.
David Sacks, Trump’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar, has emphasized the plan will “not cost taxpayers a dime.”
“The government will not acquire additional assets for the stockpile beyond those obtained through forfeiture proceedings,” Sacks wrote on X. “The purpose of the stockpile is responsible stewardship of the government’s digital assets under the Treasury Department.”
However, the order also directs the Treasury and Commerce departments to “develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin.”
Trump’s push for a crypto strategic reserve was met with mixed reactions by the industry last week.
While many cheered the move, some argued bitcoin was only the only token fit for a reserve — a concern the administration seemingly sought to allay by separating the bitcoin reserve from the digital asset stockpile.
