# The United States Seeks a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

The United States' Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, SBR) is rapidly evolving from a campaign slogan into a serious policy system backed by executive orders, congressional legislation, and White House coordination frameworks. This is not a routine asset allocation adjustment but a systemic endorsement by the world's largest economy of Bitcoin's strategic role as "digital gold." Its ripple effects will far exceed the crypto market itself, directly challenging the century-old foundation of sovereign reserve systems.

1. Policy Path: From Executive Orders to Legal Frameworks

On March 6, 2025, Trump signed an executive order officially establishing the policy direction to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Reserve. The order specifies that the Treasury must set up a dedicated agency to manage the Bitcoin reserve, with assets sourced from BTC confiscated through criminal or civil forfeiture procedures, and that Bitcoin within the reserve is prohibited from sale, to be held permanently as a national strategic asset. This ends a costly traditional practice—over the years, the Department of Justice auctioned off confiscated Bitcoin at low prices, which is estimated to have caused American taxpayers to miss out on over $17 billion in potential gains.

However, an executive order is only the first step. It can be easily overturned by the next president. To truly embed the policy into the system, legislation is needed. To this end, Senator Cynthia Lummis and Representative Nick Begich jointly reintroduced the "American Reserve Modernization Act" (ARMA, formerly the BITCOIN Act). Its core provisions set rigid targets: acquire 1 million BTC within five years, hold for at least 20 years, with quarterly public reserve proofs and independent audits—integrating Bitcoin into the national strategic asset portfolio alongside gold and oil.

2. Who Pays for the Reserve? — The Clever "Budget-Neutral" Logic

The most critical controversy around the ARMA bill is not whether to buy, but how to pay. The bill explicitly requires "budget neutrality"—not to use additional taxpayer funds. The most discussed plan is the "Gold Certificate Revaluation": currently, the Federal Reserve's gold reserves are recorded at the statutory price of $42 per ounce (set in 1973), while the market fair value has long surpassed this level. If Congress approves revaluing the gold at market prices, the accounting adjustment alone could unlock approximately $1.24 trillion in asset floating space, allowing the government to exchange newly issued gold certificates for BTC. This plan is politically feasible, fiscally non-taxing, and more persuasive publicly than direct appropriations.

Another key source is the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). This fund manages over $200 billion in assets and has historically been used to stabilize the dollar exchange rate and international monetary flows. Its flexible use within certain limits does not require congressional approval for each action. If the Treasury includes BTC as an investable asset within the ESF, it could initiate a significant initial Bitcoin position without triggering congressional appropriations.

3. Practical Constraints: Holding Without Buying, the Trillion-Dollar Ambition Faces Institutional Lock-in

Currently, there is a clear attitude gap between the White House and the Treasury Department. Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the White House Digital Asset Advisory Committee, hinted at a "major breakthrough in the coming weeks" at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in April 2026, suggesting the executive branch has spent months clarifying legal and operational frameworks. However, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's stance is more conservative: the Treasury will not proactively buy new Bitcoin in the market, and reserve growth will be strictly limited to proceeds from law enforcement confiscations. This position has remained unchanged since January 2026.

A deeper obstacle comes from the Federal Reserve. Chairman Powell has explicitly stated on multiple occasions that the Federal Reserve Act does not authorize the Fed to hold Bitcoin, and the Fed has no plans to seek legal changes, shifting responsibility entirely to Congress. This means that even if the executive and legislative branches push forward, the core of the U.S. financial system—the Federal Reserve—currently chooses to stay on the sidelines. Market data also confirms this structural resistance: according to Polymarket, the probability of the SBR actually being implemented during Trump’s presidency is currently only around 31%.

4. Global Competition: The Quiet Launch of a Bitcoin Hoarding Race

While advancing the legislative framework, a global "Bitcoin hoarding arms race" has quietly begun. Countries involved include: the Czech Central Bank researching allocating up to 5% of foreign exchange reserves to BTC; Brazil considering a bill to allocate 5% of foreign reserves to BTC; proposing constitutional amendments to include BTC in national reserves; and Russia promoting mining industrialization through a unified tax framework.

Bitcoin's total supply is capped at 21 million coins. Locking 1 million coins means nearly 5% of the total supply will be permanently sealed for at least 20 years. For countries that have not yet established BTC exposure, this creates a strategic dilemma: either spend real money to buy or face a structural gap of no "digital hard asset" in their holdings for the next two decades. This is the warning from think tanks about a "digitalized Bretton Woods system"—the U.S. is not using military power but leveraging financial preemptive advantages to force the world to reassess the robustness of fiat reserves. As a reference, El Salvador holds over 5,700 BTC, but compared to the potential reserve scale of the U.S. (millions of BTC), the gap is four orders of magnitude. This competition is essentially redefining the boundaries of "reserve assets" at the sovereign level.

5. Three Specific Impacts on Ordinary Traders

The SBR's practical impact on retail traders is already beginning to show: First, a paradigm shift in pricing power. Once the SBR is implemented, it will continuously withdraw liquidity from the circulating market, and this supply-demand contraction, combined with ETF quota expansions causing "gamma squeezes," will make BTC more sensitive to macro policies and sovereign allocation behaviors; second, the emergence of new policy-driven trading patterns. Signals from the White House or congressional hearings often trigger sharp volatility—after a Senate hearing, BTC once surged 12%, and S&P analysts raised year-end target prices to $250k, with predictions from JPMorgan and Citigroup in the range of $170k to $189k. In an extremely optimistic scenario, collective G7 action could push prices beyond $250k; third, providing retail investors with a strategic basis to track "sovereign-level" signals. Key milestones include the progress of the ARMA bill's congressional votes, authoritative statements from the Treasury on gold revaluation, and major White House announcements. These events are often accompanied by a sharp rise in BTC implied volatility and a re-estimation of market pricing centers.

In summary, the essence of the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a three-tiered systemic upgrade: the national recognition of Bitcoin as a sovereign reserve asset—elevating it from marginal speculation to an asset on par with gold; a century-long reconstruction of the reserve system—completing BTC accumulation through "gold revaluation + confiscation of holdings" in a budget-neutral manner; and a global preemptive advantage—using non-spending stock assets to seize strategic initiative in the post-fiat era, forcing other nations into passive choices of whether to follow. This transformation will not happen overnight, but every step of its unfolding warrants close attention.