Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., promoted her legislation to create a bitcoin strategic reserve just days after President-elect Donald Trump confirmed he’s still supportive of the initiative.
“Bitcoin is like digital gold,” Lummis said at the Blockchain Association’s Policy Summit in Washington on Dec. 17.
Her bill, introduced in July, would have the Treasury Department purchase one million bitcoins over a period of five years and require that such bitcoins be held for at least 20 years.
Lummis said Dec. 17 that creating a bitcoin reserve “underpins the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency,” and would take “some of the sting” away from the national debt, which totaled more than $36 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to data from the Treasury Department.
She added that “we don’t have to invest new taxpayer dollars in this (and) can convert assets that we have to bitcoin.”
The bill never moved out of the Senate Banking Committee, meaning it would need to be reintroduced in the next Congress.
On Dec. 12, Trump told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that he’s supportive of the idea after first proposing it at a bitcoin conference in July.
“Yeah, I think so,” Trump responded when asked about the possibility of a bitcoin strategic reserve. “We’re going to do something great with crypto, because we don’t want China or anybody else … others are embracing it, and we want to be the head.”
Lummis said that the Senate Banking Committee, which she serves as a member of, and the House Financial Services Committee, which previously worked on crypto legislation, will likely “move in the order that the White House wants to,” whether that be working on a bitcoin strategic reserve bill or a crypto market structure bill first.
In May, the House passed a digital asset bill that would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission new authority over the digital commodities market, while designating the SEC as the regulator for the digital securities market. Though the bill never reached a vote in the Senate, several policymakers said it’s likely that Congress passes that bill in 2025.
Lummis previously worked with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on a 2022 comprehensive crypto bill that would give the CFTC new oversight of the digital commodities market and a 2024 bill that focused on stablecoins.
In the new Congress, “we're going to have an atmosphere that is more conducive to actually get legislation across the finish line, with the help, by the way, of the White House,” Lummis said.
