House Panel Delays H.R. 8957 Vote, Stalling Bitcoin (BTC) Strategic Reserve Bill

H.R. 8957 Vote Pulled From Calendar

A bill that would lock the federal government's seized Bitcoin into a permanent, statute-backed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve lost its slot on the House calendar this week. The House Financial Services Committee postponed a vote that had been set for September 16 (local time) on H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act, and has announced no replacement date. The postponement stalls the most direct attempt yet to convert President Donald Trump's March 2025 executive order into binding law, and the committee has not disclosed a reason. Nothing in the panel's public notice points to scheduling mechanics or to substantive objections, so the bill's floor prospects now sit open-ended. Market readers tracked the delay closely because a codified reserve would formally remove the government's seized coins from any future disposal scenario — a structural supply question, not a trading headline.

The bill, introduced in May by Republican Representative Nick Begich, directs the Treasury Department to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — a formally designated stockpile of government-held Bitcoin, assembled almost entirely from coins obtained through criminal and civil forfeiture — alongside a separate Digital Asset Stockpile for non-Bitcoin digital assets. Forfeiture, the legal process by which courts transfer property tied to criminal or civil violations to the state, is meant to be the reserve's only supply channel. Two provisions carry most of the bill's economic weight. The reserve is barred from buying Bitcoin on the open market, so the stockpile can grow only through future seizures. And any Bitcoin placed in the reserve may not be sold for at least 20 years, converting what is currently discretionary custody into a statutorily mandated two-decade hold. To secure transparency, the text requires quarterly Proof-of-Reserve reports — third-party attestations verifying how much Bitcoin the reserve actually controls — and instructs the Treasury and Commerce Departments to study additional acquisition methods that leave the federal budget untouched.

From Executive Order 14233 to Statute

H.R. 8957 traces directly to Executive Order 14233, “Establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile,” which Trump signed on March 6, 2025. An executive order directs agencies but can be rescinded by a successor administration with a signature; a statute cannot. That asymmetry is the entire point of the bill: harden the reserve into permanent national policy rather than a decision a single election could unwind. Trump has repeatedly voiced his ambition to make the United States the “digital asset capital of the world.” The scale of what a codified reserve would lock in is material: as of February 2026, the federal government held approximately 328,372 BTC on the Bitcoin (BTC) network, worth more than $25.5 billion at prevailing market prices. A two-decade statutory disposal ban over a position of that size would remove any realistic future sale overhang from the market's books for a generation. Under the current text, the Treasury and Commerce Departments are ordered to report on budget-neutral acquisition strategies — approaches that would not compete with appropriated federal spending — and the quarterly attestation regime would hand market participants a recurring, auditable count of government holdings for the first time in a standardized format.

The delay also lands in a crowded legislative queue that our Bitcoin policy coverage has been tracking. The Senate blocked the broader market-structure bill in a 49-50 CLARITY Act cloture vote, while a House panel passed the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act 38-5. Against that backdrop, the committee's silence on a new H.R. 8957 date pushes any final passage well past the near-term calendar, and market participants have adjusted their codification expectations accordingly. Until a statute passes, the executive-order framework remains what binds agencies day to day — and what a future administration could still reverse. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

The 20-Year Sale Ban Carries the Bill

Read against the bill text itself, the single provision doing the most work is the 20-year disposal prohibition. Remove it and H.R. 8957 becomes custodial housekeeping — clearer accounting for coins the government already holds; keep it, and roughly 328,372 BTC moves from contingent supply overhang to locked supply for two decades, a structural commitment no single hodl narrative could replicate. As of this writing the bill remains a proposal, not law: it carries no effective date, binds no entity, and the committee has set no new vote. Until markup is rescheduled, the codification arc that began with Executive Order 14233 on March 6, 2025 stays paused, and the government's $25.5 billion Bitcoin position keeps its current, discretionary status.