State bitcoin reserve plans proliferate

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Amid ongoing speculation about an American strategic bitcoin reserve, several US states are looking to take matters into their own hands. 

“It’s time for Texas to lead the way in establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve,” Texas senator Charles Schwertner wrote in a Wednesday X post. 

The GOP lawmaker’s proposal calls bitcoin a valuable digital asset “with strategic potential for enhancing this state’s financial resilience.” Its decentralized nature and finite supply are “unique qualities that can serve as a hedge against inflation and economic volatility.”

The draft bill seems to echo a Texas House proposal from Rep. Giovanni Capriglione last month. 

The reserve would be a “special fund” outside the state treasury’s general revenue fund. The comptroller would be responsible for establishing secure custody of the BTC (i.e. via cold storage) and may contract a US-based third party for help. 

The Texas legislature — by a two-thirds majority vote in each house — can direct the comptroller to transfer, sell or convert the reserve’s BTC. It would then deposit proceeds to another state treasury fund or account. 

Meanwhile, a lawmaker from Oklahoma (Cody Maynard) introduced a bill to allow the state treasurer to invest public funds in BTC, stablecoins or any other digital asset with an average market cap north of $500 billion over the previous calendar year. 

Money used for such purchases could come from the state’s general, revenue stabilization and/or constitutional reserve funds. The amount it invests in BTC can’t exceed 10% of the public funds in the account. 

These proposals follow similar ones by Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, North Dakota and other states.

While the fate of Cynthia Lummis’s national BTC reserve plan remains unclear, at the very least Trump has promised to keep the BTC the government already possesses.

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