The US House Committee on Financial Services voted on Wednesday, September 16, to advance a bill that turns Donald Trump's executive order on a strategic Bitcoin reserve into federal law. The committee passed the document 28 to 21.
What exactly did the committee approve?
The bill is called the American Reserve Modernization Act, or ARMA, numbered H.R. 8957. Republican Representative Nicholas Begich introduced it back in May. The text turns Trump's Bitcoin reserve order into a permanent legal rule that a future president could not cancel with a single signature.
Under the plan, the US Treasury would gain two separate units. The first, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, would hold Bitcoin seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases. The second, the Digital Asset Stockpile, would cover other digital assets that reach the government through the same process.
According to analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, the US government currently holds roughly 324,527 BTC. At the time of the vote, that stash was worth about $24.7 billion.
Before ARMA, Congress had already debated separate bills on stablecoins and crypto market structure, including the CLARITY Act. None of those touched the government's own Bitcoin holdings directly. ARMA is the first bill that tries to write the White House's existing reserve policy into law, rather than just set rules for the private market.
How would the reserve actually work?
The bill's core rule is a minimum holding period. Bitcoin placed in the reserve could not be sold for 20 years after seizure. The authors say this removes the temptation to dump the asset quickly whenever the federal budget needs cash. A few US states already apply a similar rule, barring themselves from selling accumulated Bitcoin before a set date.
Beyond the holding period, the bill lays out several other mechanisms:
- Asset inventory: every federal agency must file a full accounting of the digital assets already under its control.
- Quarterly proof-of-reserve reports and independent third-party audits.
- A study of budget-neutral ways to grow the reserve without new spending.
- The right of individual states to store their own Bitcoin at the Federal Reserve.
- A guarantee protecting ordinary holders' right to self-custody their private keys.
Why did the text change right before the vote?
Just before the vote, the committee adopted a substitute text that stripped out a funding route tied to Federal Reserve profits. Using Fed earnings to grow the reserve is no longer on the table as a funding source.
The same substitute text also thinned out some of the transparency requirements from the original draft. That is largely why the vote split almost entirely along party lines: Democrats on the committee mostly called the changes a step back for oversight of federal assets, while Republicans argued the bill still ranks among the most detailed crypto reserve laws proposed so far.
Republicans hold a majority in the House, so a floor vote there should pass on party votes alone. The Senate is a tougher hurdle, since most bills need 60 votes and at least some Democratic support to clear it. That is exactly where another crypto bill, the CLARITY Act, stalled earlier this year.
What are lawmakers and advocates saying?
Begich himself laid out his reasoning during the committee session.
"We cannot allow Bitcoin to be held by the federal government to languish in fragmented and inconsistent custody. It poses unacceptable cybersecurity risks and fails to give an adequate accounting of what the federal government actually owns."
- Nicholas Begich, US Representative, from a statement at the House Financial Services Committee markup, September 16, 2026
Bitcoin Policy Institute executive director Connor Brown called the committee's approval a genuinely historic step for Bitcoin policy. Back in May, when the bill was first introduced, Strive CEO Matt Cole called it the single most important piece of crypto legislation that could come out of Washington.
What happens next?
Committee approval clears just the first formal hurdle. The bill still needs a vote in the full House and then the Senate before it can reach the president's desk.
Growing government confidence in Bitcoin tends to ripple into private markets too. Ukrainians who occasionally sell Bitcoin for hryvnia keep an eye on news like this: the more firmly major players treat the asset as an official reserve, the steadier local exchange rates tend to feel.
No date has been set yet for a vote in the full House. Given how the CLARITY Act fared in the Senate, analysts do not rule out a long and difficult road for ARMA before it ever reaches the president's desk.
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