The U.S. House Financial Services Committee voted 28-21 on September 16 to advance H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 (ARMA), the first Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill to clear a full House committee. The legislation would consolidate an estimated 198,000-328,000 BTC held ac...
"The U.S. is already one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world, but Congress has never set a federal policy on what to do with that asset." — Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), Co-sponsor of the American Reserve Modernization Act
The U.S. House Financial Services Committee voted 28-21 on September 16 to advance H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 (ARMA), the first Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill to clear a full House committee. The legislation would consolidate an estimated 198,000-328,000 BTC held across federal agencies under Treasury custody, impose a 20-year holding requirement, mandate quarterly cryptographic proof-of-reserve reports, and classify Bitcoin as a Tier 1 strategic reserve asset alongside gold.
ARMA does not authorize new Bitcoin purchases. Acquisition authority sits in a companion bill, the BITCOIN Act (S.954/H.R. 2032), which would direct Treasury to buy 200,000 BTC per year for five years — funded by revaluing the Federal Reserve's gold certificates from $42.22 per ounce to current market prices above $4,500. That revaluation would generate approximately $1.18 trillion in unrealized paper gains on 8,133 metric tonnes of U.S. gold reserves.
The committee vote split along party lines. Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) is the sole Democratic co-sponsor among 23 backers. The bill faces significant obstacles: the House recessed after September 17 until post-election, the Senate failed to advance the related CLARITY Act 49-50 just one day before ARMA's markup, and the 119th Congress expires in January 2027. No Senate floor vote for ARMA has been scheduled, and overcoming the 60-vote filibuster threshold with 53 Republican seats remains the central obstacle.
H.R. 8957 passed the House Financial Services Committee on September 16, 2026, with 28 votes in favor and 21 against. The bill was introduced on May 21, 2026, by Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) with an initial coalition of 21 co-sponsors.
Core provisions of ARMA:
The bill codifies an executive order signed by President Trump on March 6, 2025, which first established the reserve. According to Rep. Begich, ARMA is designed to protect digital reserve assets "from the whims of Congress or future administrations." Rep. Golden noted that without legislation, stockpiles created under executive authority enjoy no "weight of law."
The legislative strategy splits into two distinct instruments:
| Feature | ARMA (H.R. 8957) | BITCOIN Act (S.954 / H.R. 2032) | |---------|------------------|----------------------------------| | Primary function | Custody, audit, and holding framework | Acquisition authorization | | Purchases | No new purchases authorized | 200,000 BTC/year for 5 years (1M BTC total) | | Funding source | N/A | Gold certificate revaluation | | Target holdings | Existing forfeiture BTC (~198,000-328,000) | Up to 1,000,000 BTC (~5% of total supply) | | Holding period | 20 years minimum | 20 years minimum | | Lead sponsors | Begich (R-AK), Golden (D-ME) | Lummis (R-WY), Begich (R-AK) | | Committee status | Passed committee 28-21 | Not yet voted on |
ARMA is the custody bill. The BITCOIN Act is the buy bill. Neither has reached a full floor vote in either chamber.
The BITCOIN Act's acquisition framework relies on a mechanism that has drawn both interest and skepticism: revaluing the U.S. government's gold certificates.
The numbers:
The statutory gold price has remained unchanged for 53 years. Adjusting it to market value would create a balance sheet gain large enough to fund Bitcoin purchases without new taxes, government borrowing, or deficit spending — at least on paper. Whether Congress or the Federal Reserve Board would authorize such revaluation is a separate political question that remains unresolved.
The mechanism is novel. The U.S. government would, in effect, mark up a 1970s-era accounting entry on one reserve asset (gold) to acquire a new one (Bitcoin). No appropriation would be required.
The precise quantity of Bitcoin held by the federal government remains disputed. Administration officials have provided figures differing by approximately 130,000 BTC.
Available data points:
The discrepancy between reported figures underscores the operational gap ARMA seeks to close. There is currently no unified audit, no cryptographic proof-of-reserve, and no single agency with custodial authority over all holdings.
White House digital asset adviser Patrick Witt stated in mid-2026 that the administration has cleared a "major legal hurdle" in standing up the reserve, calling it "a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets." His deputy, Harry John, has led the interagency process of identifying legal authorities, commissioning legal memos, and building custody infrastructure across agencies originally designed for gold, not private keys.
Section 6 of ARMA establishes what would be the first government-mandated cryptographic proof-of-reserve in any sovereign context. Requirements include:
Quarterly publication on an official Treasury website of:
Independent verification: A third-party auditor with cryptographic attestation expertise must verify each report.
Public verifiability: The on-chain nature of Bitcoin means any person with a blockchain explorer could independently confirm holdings against the published attestations.
This represents a structural transparency advantage over existing U.S. reserve reporting. The gold reserve at Fort Knox has not been independently audited since 1953 (with partial audits in the 1970s). The Bitcoin reserve, under ARMA, would be cryptographically verified every 90 days.
While federal legislation advances, three states have already enacted Bitcoin reserve laws:
| State | Bill | Status | Key Provision | |-------|------|--------|---------------| | New Hampshire | HB 302 (2025) | Enacted | Treasurer may invest up to 5% of public funds in assets with >$500B market cap (de facto Bitcoin only) | | Texas | SB 21 (signed June 22, 2025) | Operational | Strategic Bitcoin Reserve; first purchase of $5M in IBIT (BlackRock's Bitcoin Trust ETF) in November 2025 | | Arizona | HB 2749 (2025) | Enacted | Allows crypto seized through enforcement to remain in original form rather than liquidated |
Arizona's legislature has introduced additional bills (SB 1649, SB 1042, SB 1373) to create or expand a Digital Assets Strategic Reserve Fund, though none have completed full passage in the current session.
The state-level activity demonstrates that sovereign Bitcoin accumulation is occurring regardless of federal action, albeit at modest scale. Texas's $5 million initial purchase represents approximately 60 BTC at November 2025 prices.
Opposition to ARMA has centered on three arguments:
1. No economic utility. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, argued: "Typically, when the government holds strategic reserves, it is for an essential input that powers the U.S. economy and day-to-day life for American families. Crypto, however, does not fall into these categories, because it has no inherent value."
2. Insider benefit concerns. Democrats on the committee raised questions about whether the reserve would disproportionately benefit political insiders with existing Bitcoin exposure, including administration officials.
3. Partisan composition. The 28-21 vote fell along party lines. Only one Democrat, Rep. Golden, co-sponsors the bill, and he does not sit on the Financial Services Committee. Bipartisan support in the Senate — where 7 Democratic or independent votes are needed to reach 60 — has not materialized.
The economic utility argument warrants examination through the lens of value flow analysis. Bitcoin's fee revenue of approximately $115 million annually against an $18.2 billion mining issuance subsidy means the network's operational cost exceeds fee-based revenue by a factor of 158. The government would be acquiring and holding an asset whose underlying network remains 99% subsidy-dependent, according to on-chain data. Whether the asset's store-of-value function justifies reserve status despite the network's subsidy dependence is the core unresolved policy question.
The bill faces three structural obstacles:
1. House floor vote. House members left Washington after September 17 and are not scheduled to return until after the November 2026 midterm elections. No floor vote has been calendared.
2. Senate filibuster. The Senate requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. Republicans hold 53 seats. The CLARITY Act, another digital asset bill, failed 49-50 on September 15 — one day before ARMA's committee markup. No companion ARMA bill has been introduced in the Senate, though the BITCOIN Act (S.954) covers acquisition.
3. Congress expiration. The 119th Congress ends in January 2027. Any bill not enacted before then must be reintroduced in the 120th Congress.
The most likely scenario, based on current legislative calendars and vote counts, is that ARMA does not reach a floor vote before the session expires. However, the committee passage establishes precedent and legislative text for reintroduction. If midterm elections expand Republican majorities or shift Democratic sentiment on digital assets, the pathway could widen.
Holding ~200,000-328,000 BTC at current prices (~$84,000) represents $16.6B-$27.6B in government assets. Contextualizing against the national balance sheet:
If the BITCOIN Act's 1,000,000 BTC target were achieved at today's prices, the reserve would be valued at $84 billion — still just 0.22% of the national debt. The gold revaluation paper gain of $1.18 trillion would exceed the Bitcoin purchase cost by 14x, making the mechanism technically feasible from a balance sheet perspective.
The fundamental question remains whether locking a volatile, subsidy-dependent asset for 20 years represents prudent reserve management or speculative policy. Gold, the asset Bitcoin is being equated to under Tier 1 classification, generates no fee revenue but also requires no $18 billion annual issuance subsidy to maintain network security.
ARMA's committee passage is procedurally significant but substantively incomplete. The bill establishes custody, audit, and holding rules for assets the government already possesses. The acquisition ambitions in the companion BITCOIN Act — 1,000,000 BTC funded by a 107x gold certificate revaluation — remain further from legislative reality.
The 28-21 vote, the partisan split, and the Senate arithmetic suggest the immediate legislative impact is limited. What has changed is the normalization of sovereign Bitcoin accumulation as a policy category. Three states are operational. The House committee has voted. And the federal government holds somewhere between $16.6 billion and $27.6 billion in Bitcoin it has not yet figured out how to count.
The fact that a government proposing to manage a 20-year cryptographic reserve asset cannot produce a consistent tally of what it currently holds tells you where the policy stands: ahead of the politics, but behind the plumbing.