House Bill to Build Trump’s Bitcoin Reserve Has One Major Difference

On Friday, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would enshrine into law President Donald Trump’s proposed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve—but the bill is crucially different from the legislation introduced in the Senate earlier this week. 

Unlike the Bitcoin Act put forth by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) on Tuesday, which would commit the U.S. government to buying up some $80 billion worth of Bitcoin, Donalds’ Reserve and Stockpile Act does not call for the purchase of a predetermined sum of BTC.

Instead, Donalds’ proposed legislation, which is barely more than a page in length, would only codify into federal law Trump’s recent executive order that called for the creation of a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and separate Digital Asset Stockpile. 

“For years, the Democrats waged war on crypto,” Donalds said in a statement shared with Decrypt. “Now is the time for Congressional Republicans to decisively end this war.”

Donalds also echoed the language in Trump’s executive order, which stipulates that both the Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile be seeded with funds seized in criminal or civil asset proceedings. His bill would also likewise authorize the U.S. Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary to add more Bitcoin to a federal reserve if such acquisitions were “budget neutral,” according to the statement, even though the bill contains no such provision. 

In recent days, White House officials have used similar language to color any potential purchases of Bitcoin by the federal government, which is estimated to already possess nearly 200,000 BTC from civil and criminal forfeitures. 

It is debatable whether Sen Lummis’ ambitious Bitcoin Act is budget neutral. The bill would, if signed into law, see the U.S. government purchase tens of billions of dollars worth of BTC, mainly by forcing the Federal Reserve to have its Nixon-era gold certificates reevaluated at current prices, and using the proceeds from that mark-up to buy more of the world’s top cryptocurrency.

Earlier this week at a closed-door roundtable, as Decrypt previously reported, the executive director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets, Bo Hines, told crypto leaders the Trump administration wants to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible. During the same meeting, Hines told Sen. Lummis that the White House plans to support legislation that puts a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law and will apply pressure to make sure it passes Congress, according to meeting attendees. 

While multiple attendees of the roundtable told Decrypt they took that message to mean the White House supports Lummis’ Bitcoin Act, a White House official emphasized to Decrypt on Thursday that Hines did not endorse any specific piece of legislation during the event. 

The bill proposed Friday by Donalds—a fiercely loyal Trump ally—could offer the White House a less contentious avenue to codifying its Bitcoin reserve into law. It might not compel the U.S. government to begin buying up tens of billions of dollars worth of BTC, but given the current state of discourse over government spending, that simplicity could make the legislation more attractive.