More than 16 months after President Donald Trump signed the executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, the initiative remains stalled, with two federal departments locked in an unresolved dispute over which one has the legal authority to manage it.
A Turf War Over $20 Billion in Bitcoin
The Trump administration’s plan to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has been complicated by two government departments vying to run it, alongside questions about which has the legal authority to do so. Trump ordered the reserve to be created last year as part of his promise to turn America into the “crypto capital of the world,” with the plan originally intended to house it inside the U.S. Treasury Department, funded by Bitcoin from asset seizures conducted across the federal government along with possible new purchases.
The plan originally intended to house the reserve inside the Treasury Department, but conversations have since pivoted toward placing it inside the Commerce Department instead, according to Bloomberg’s Monday report, which cited people familiar with the discussions. The dispute is not merely bureaucratic. A central concern is whether the Treasury Department is legally able to manage the crypto holdings at all, a question that has now landed with government lawyers.
The Justice Department has said its Office of Legal Counsel is working closely with both the Treasury and Commerce departments to determine legally available options for accomplishing the president’s policy of establishing the reserve. That involvement signals the disagreement has moved beyond routine interagency friction into genuinely contested legal territory.
Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve plan faces legal and agency control disputes
Why Neither Agency Wants Full Ownership
The core legal problem is that existing federal asset-management statutes were built around gold, foreign exchange, and Treasury securities, not a volatile digital bearer asset. Treasury’s traditional mandate centers on fiscal instruments, and holding Bitcoin long-term as a strategic asset rather than liquidating it as seized property sits awkwardly within that framework. Commerce has been floated as an alternative on the theory that Bitcoin represents a strategic technology and competitiveness asset, though that rationale requires its own legal grounding.
A further complication is whether Bitcoin can be held indefinitely, as Trump’s original executive order envisioned, given how sharply its price can swing. According to Bloomberg, the source of the dispute is whether the Treasury has the legal authority to manage bitcoin, particularly given its volatility.
The March 6, 2025 executive order created two distinct structures: the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve itself, composed of forfeited Bitcoin, and a broader U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile for other seized crypto assets. The order also directed Treasury and Commerce to develop budget-neutral methods for expanding holdings—a constraint that, paired with the unresolved oversight question, has effectively frozen any new accumulation. As of early July 2026, the government has not designated a managing agency, disclosed its full holdings, or acquired a single new satoshi.
Missed Deadlines and Contradictory Signals
The original order set a 30-day deadline for agencies to report holdings and a 60-day deadline for the Treasury to deliver a full legal, custodial, and legislative evaluation. Both passed without public disclosure; the 60-day deadline expired May 5, 2025.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has added to the confusion, stating publicly that the U.S. “won’t be buying” additional Bitcoin in the near term before partially walking that back on social media by saying Treasury is exploring “budget-neutral pathways” for expanding holdings. The contradiction reflects a deeper tension in the executive order itself: political appetite for accumulation is constrained by a fiscal rule that makes buying nearly impossible without a market-neutral mechanism or explicit congressional funding.
Congress Weighs In
Separately, Congress is developing the ARMA Act, which would codify the reserve into law and call for acquiring 1 million Bitcoin over five years using budget-neutral strategies, with coins held for at least 20 years except for sales to reduce the national debt. The ARMA Act builds on the earlier BITCOIN Act, introduced in July 2024 and updated in March 2025, which White House Digital Assets Advisor Patrick Witt has called “version 2.0” of the original bill. Neither has been enacted, and without congressional authorization, agencies remain reluctant to act – a legislative gap that may prove harder to close than the interagency dispute itself.
Scale of the Holdings
According to Bitcoin Treasuries data, the U.S. currently holds the largest state reserve of any government at 328,372 BTC, valued at approximately $21 billion, ahead of China, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and El Salvador. The no-sell clause embedded in the original order – that Treasury-controlled Bitcoin “shall not be sold and shall be maintained as reserve assets” – remains the clearest public statement of the government’s intended long-term posture, regardless of how the ownership dispute resolves.
What Comes Next
The Department of Justice is now collaborating with both Treasury and Commerce to explore legally viable options, while the White House continues to assess the optimal structure for implementing the plan. White House spokesperson Liz Huston has said the administration “continues to evaluate the best structure” for both the reserve and the digital asset stockpile. Patrick Witt has said an announcement on the reserve’s structure is “coming soon” – language that has now been the operative phrase for months, fueling frustration within the crypto industry over the absence of a concrete framework nearly a year and a half after the reserve was first announced.
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