Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Digital Assets, recently confirmed that the formal announcement of the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has entered a "breakthrough" countdown.
The news itself is not surprising — Trump signed the executive order establishing the reserve as early as March 6, 2025. But what truly deserves attention is Witt's statement: the government has resolved the legal and custodial obstacles related to protecting government-held digital assets.
In other words, the basket for the reserve is in place. All that remains is an official announcement.
Witt disclosed that the U.S. government currently holds approximately 328,372 BTC, valued at approximately $25.4 billion at current prices. This scale means the U.S. would directly become the world's largest sovereign Bitcoin holder, far surpassing El Salvador and exceeding any single institutional investor's holdings.
Why Has the Reserve Been Delayed Since 2025?
The core bottleneck has been the government custody problem. Bitcoin's private key management has no precedent within the government system.
Questions like how many cold wallets the Treasury has, which departments hold scattered keys, and what approval process is needed to access assets — these have standard answers in gold and foreign exchange management systems, but in the cryptocurrency field, the government is navigating uncharted territory.
More importantly, there's legal authorization. An executive order can announce a reserve, but the daily management of reserve assets — such as whether to sell during extreme price volatility, and who holds the decision-making authority for rebalancing — these issues have no clear answers. Without clarity, the reserve cannot truly operate.
According to Witt, the inter-agency process has spent months drafting specialized legal memos, addressing core questions one by one: which institution has the authority to hold assets, the holding period, and whether Congress can reclaim assets.
The Catalysts That Forced the Issue
In January 2026, on-chain detective ZachXBT publicly tracked abnormal fund flows from U.S. Marshals Service托管 accounts: 21-year-old John DAgati, through his father Dean DAgati's contractor company CMDSS (a private enterprise holding USMS cryptocurrency custody contracts), stole over $460 million in cryptocurrency from government-controlled wallets.
The stolen funds came from the USMS custody's seized asset pool, including assets recovered from the 2016 Bitfinex hack. FBI arrested him in St. Martin on March 4, 2026.
But this case revealed an awkward reality: billions of dollars in federal Bitcoin were actually stored with a private contractor lacking sufficient federal oversight. Without closing this loophole, the cryptocurrency asset reserve is a time bomb.
Meanwhile, the timing of the White House announcement is deliberate. Witt clearly stated they want everything ready before announcing. They don't want to repeat the experience of "announced but actually not yet operational."
Bitcoin markets are highly sensitive to policy announcements — a failed announcement's sell-off pressure could be worse than no announcement at all.
Congressional Timing Window
Another timing consideration comes from Congress: Senator Lummis is pushing to complete committee voting on the BITCOIN Act before the summer recess. In the House, Congressman Biggs has re-packaged the bill as the American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA), aimed at gaining broader bipartisan support.
The bill authorizes the Treasury to purchase up to 200,000 BTC annually for five years, with a minimum holding period of 20 years.
If the bill passes, the Treasury's first public market purchase could land in Q4 2026. If missed, midterm elections will occupy the agenda, and the next viable window won't arrive until 2028.
Structural Impact on Crypto Markets
For the crypto market, the reserve's impact is structural. While 328,000 BTC represents a limited share of overall liquid supply and the government won't operate frequently, what changes is the market narrative itself.
When the world's largest economy publicly holds Bitcoin, it ceases to be merely a speculative asset and becomes a form of value storage. Once the narrative shifts, other sovereign nations following suit is merely a matter of time.
If the U.S. formally enacts the reserve into law, within 18 months, a batch of nations will follow suit.
