President Donald Trump's campaign promise of a Stretegic Bitcoin Reserve just took another step to being a reality today. A new piece of legislation making its way through Washington aims to permanently anchor the United States government's bitcoin holdings inside federal law, and adds in a mandatory two-decade lockup attached.

 

Representative Nick Begich (R-AK), joined by Democratic co-lead Representative Jared Golden (ME), introduced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 on Thursday. Known as ARMA, the bill arrived in Congress with 17 original co-sponsors spanning both parties, a fact that backers have been quick to point out, given how often digital asset legislation...well almost all legislation lately, seems to stalls along partisan lines.

 

A Tighter Legal Framework Than an Executive Order

ARMA is essentially a legislative upgrade to the strategic Bitcoin reserve President Donald Trump established through executive order back in March 2025. That order told federal agencies to hold their seized crypto and stop the "fire sale" liquidations that characterized the prior administration's approach. But executive orders can be reversed. Statutes are a lot harder to undo, and that difference is at the heart of why Begich and his co-sponsors pushed for the bill.

 

"Administrations have auctioned crypto off or held it in reserve, according to the whims of the executive branch," Golden said in a statement. Under ARMA, that kind of discretion would be gone. The stockpile would carry "the weight of law."

 

The 20-Year Hold and the 1 Million BTC Target

Under the bill, the Treasury Department would be authorized to acquire up to 200,000 BTC per year over five years, targeting a total reserve of 1 million bitcoin, or roughly 5% of the asset's fixed supply. All holdings, including the approximately 198,000 to 328,000 BTC the government already controls from years of criminal forfeitures, would be subject to a hard 20-year minimum holding period. During that window, no bitcoin could be sold, swapped, auctioned, or otherwise disposed of, with one very narrow exception: if doing so would help reduce the national debt.

 

The government's existing stash came primarily from high-profile seizures including the Silk Road takedown and the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery, in which the DOJ clawed back 94,636 BTC. A White House official, Patrick Witt of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, acknowledged at a recent conference that managing those holdings has been messy. "We've heard stories and confirmed some of them of cold wallets that were being stored in drawers of desks in various agencies," he said. ARMA would consolidate all federally held digital assets under Treasury oversight and require proof-of-reserve reporting to bring transparency to what is currently a very scattered procedure.

 

Budget-Neutral by Design, But Skeptics Remain

The bill's drafters say new bitcoin purchases would be funded through Federal Reserve remittances and other budget-neutral financial mechanisms, sidestepping the politically charged question of whether taxpayer money would foot the bill. That type of framing was important for bipartisan appeal, and it seemed to work, for the most part. There will always be skeptics when it comes to this bug of a shift in tradition U.S. monetary policy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent already threw cold water on agency-level purchases earlier this year, a signal that the White House and Congress may not be entirely aligned on the mechanics.

 

Begich drew a parallel to gold when defending the reserve concept to Fox Business. "When you look at gold, it is the dominant precious metal reserve," he said, making the case that bitcoin occupies an analogous role in the digital asset class. Strive CEO Matt Cole went further, calling ARMA "the single most important crypto legislation" that could emerge from Washington. A very dramatic statement, given the GENIUS and CLARITY Bills.

 

A Long Road Ahead

For all the bullish hype, ARMA is still just a bill. It needs committee action, alignment with a parallel Senate effort backed by Senator Cynthia Lummis, and floor votes in both chambers before it becomes law. The Senate Banking Committee recently passed the separate CLARITY Act with a 15-9 bipartisan vote, sending it to the Senate floor and setting a somewhat hopeful tone for crypto legislation broadly. We'll see whether that positive momentum carries over to a bill asking the federal government to buy and hold a trillion-dollar's worth of bitcoin for two decades.

 

At current prices, the U.S. already holds more than $25 billion in bitcoin, making it the largest national holder of the asset in the world. ARMA would formalize that position and potentially expand it dramatically. If Congress is ready to make this bet, in statute and for the long haul, is debatable. But even the discussion of doing something like this is extremely positive in my opinion.