May 21, 2026 — A new bipartisan House bill introduced Wednesday would give the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve a statutory foundation while quietly abandoning the fixed purchase mandate that defined its Senate predecessor — and adding a 20-year minimum hold that no previous reserve proposal had codified.

The American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA), led by Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) and co-lead Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), would authorize the Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 BTC per year over five years — a total ceiling of one million bitcoin, or roughly 5% of total supply — without mandating that amount. That is a structural departure from Sen. Cynthia Lummis's BITCOIN Act (S.954), which specified a hard 1 million BTC purchase target. ARMA replaces that fixed number with an annual acquisition authority, giving Treasury discretion over pace and timing while preserving the one-million-coin ceiling as a target, not a floor.

The 20-year minimum hold is the policy mechanism with the most immediate market relevance. The U.S. government currently holds an estimated 328,372 BTC accumulated through law enforcement seizures — most notably the Silk Road takedown and the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery. Under ARMA, that entire position, plus any future acquisitions, would be locked from sale for at least two decades unless Congress acts otherwise. Any sale of reserve bitcoin would be restricted to national debt reduction purposes.

ARMA also establishes a separate Digital Asset Stockpile for all federally held non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies — a clean structural division that reflects the bill's explicit framing of bitcoin as a distinct reserve-grade asset. Both the reserve and the stockpile would be consolidated under Treasury custody, pulling holdings that have historically sat scattered across federal agencies.

"Congress has never set a federal policy on what to do with that asset," Golden said in the official introduction statement. "Administrations have auctioned it off or held it in reserve, according to the whims of the executive branch. By creating a strategic reserve with the weight of law, the ARMA reinforces stability and gives Congress more time to establish long-term policy for how the federal government approaches cryptocurrency."

Begich framed the bill through a store-of-value lens: "When you look at bitcoin, it represents about 60% of all market cap for the entire crypto space. So the market has decided, in the case of gold and in the case of bitcoin, that this will be the predominant store of value within that asset class."

The bill codifies Trump's March 2025 executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — an order that created the reserve in principle but left its operational mechanics unresolved. It arrives alongside meaningful legislative momentum: the Senate Banking Committee cleared the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in a 15–9 bipartisan vote on May 13, advancing a broad crypto regulatory framework to the full Senate floor.

Eighteen original co-sponsors signed on, including Republicans and Democrats across eight states. Co-sponsor Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) stated the policy gap the bill is designed to fill: "The United States government already holds billions in seized bitcoin with no coherent strategy for managing it, and that needs to change."

The policy math shifts materially with ARMA's architecture. A hard statutory 20-year hold removes current federal holdings from any potential market circulation for decades — not as an executive preference but as a legislated constraint. The discretionary acquisition authority, by contrast, limits Treasury's maximum exposure while preserving flexibility that a fixed 1 million BTC purchase target would not have allowed.

Whether ARMA advances depends on whether House leadership schedules it alongside the broader crypto legislative stack now moving in both chambers.

Primary sources: Begich House press release, May 21, 2026 (begich.house.gov); Fox Business exclusive; Bitcoin Magazine (May 21, 2026); Senate Banking Committee vote record.