House Panel Passes 28-21 Bill Locking Trump’s 324,527 BTC Reserve for 20 Years

Two independent reports confirm the same underlying event: on Wednesday, the US House Committee on Financial Services voted 28-21 to advance H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026, which would write President Trump’s executive order on a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into federal law. The Block and Cointelegraph both reported the committee action; Cointelegraph’s account included the bill number, vote tally and legislative text, while The Block’s page confirmed the core claim: a House committee has moved to codify a permanent, statutory bitcoin reserve.

What the bill actually does

H.R. 8957 would establish two separate holding structures inside the Treasury Department: a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile for other tokens seized through criminal or civil forfeiture. Bitcoin placed in the reserve would be subject to a minimum 20-year holding period, according to the bill text cited by Cointelegraph.

The legislation also requires every federal agency to produce a full accounting of the digital assets it currently holds or controls. On top of that, it mandates quarterly proof-of-reserve reports and third-party audits, a study of budget-neutral strategies to grow the reserve, and a provision letting individual states custody their own bitcoin holdings inside the Federal Reserve system.

A separate section affirms private ownership and self-custody rights, describing control of one’s own private keys as central to the bill’s underlying principles.

Sponsor, timeline, and the number behind the reserve

Representative Nicholas Begich introduced the bill on May 21. In a statement carried by Cointelegraph, Begich said: “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.”

On the size of the existing reserve, Cointelegraph cited Arkham Intelligence data putting federal bitcoin holdings at approximately 324,527 BTC, worth roughly $24.7 billion at the time that figure was published. That dollar value is a snapshot tied to bitcoin’s price at the moment of writing, not a fixed number: BTC was trading near $76,200 around the time of the committee vote, so the reserve’s headline valuation will move with the market rather than sit still. Readers pulling this figure into their own models should treat it as an aggregated estimate from a single on-chain analytics provider, not an audited Treasury disclosure, at least until the bill’s own quarterly proof-of-reserve requirement takes effect.

What’s confirmed versus what’s still ahead

What both reports agree on: the committee vote happened, the margin was 28-21, and the bill would lock federal bitcoin holdings behind a two-decade hold if it becomes law. What remains unconfirmed is timing beyond committee passage. Neither report specifies a scheduled floor vote in the full House, and Senate action was not addressed in either account. The bill now needs to clear the full chamber and the Senate before any of its custody, audit, or 20-year hold provisions take effect.

For now, the 324,527 BTC figure and the committee’s 28-21 vote are the two hard numbers on the record. Everything downstream, floor scheduling, Senate appetite, and the eventual audited size of any statutory reserve, has yet to be reported by more than one outlet.

Read more: House Tax Committee Advances Crypto Bill Exempting Small Transaction Fees

Sources

• theblock.co
• cointelegraph.com