The BITCOIN Act would buy 1 million Bitcoin. Here’s how it’s funded.
Senator Cynthia Lummis has spent years making the case that the U.S. government should buy one million Bitcoin. She finally has a White House that agrees. Now she has to get it through Congress — before January 2027, when she walks out the door for good.
A bill twelve years in the making
She has held Bitcoin since 2013. She wore a Bitcoin lapel pin to the Senate floor. And on a March morning in Washington D.C., she walked onto a stage at the Bitcoin Policy Institute flanked by Michael Saylor and declared — for the second time in eight months — that the United States must buy one million Bitcoin.
That was 11 March 2025. Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming was reintroducing the BITCOIN Act — formally, the Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide Act — and the political conditions had shifted more dramatically in twelve months than in the previous twelve years.
President Trump had signed an executive order that same week formalising a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, funded by seized assets. David Sacks, his crypto policy advisor, was in the room. The bill had five Republican co-sponsors: Senators Jim Justice, Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall, Marsha Blackburn, and Bernie Moreno. Congressman Nick Begich of Alaska had introduced a companion bill in the House. What it still did not have — and still does not — is a path to the Senate floor.
The most ambitious reserve proposal in U.S. history
The BITCOIN Act would direct the U.S. Treasury to acquire 200,000 Bitcoin per year over five years, reaching one million Bitcoin by 2029 — approximately five percent of the total supply that will ever exist, accumulated by a single sovereign entity. All of it locked by statute for a minimum of 20 years, with the only exception being targeted sales to reduce the national debt.
The funding mechanism is arguably the bill’s most audacious feature. Lummis argues it requires no new taxpayer spending whatsoever, drawing instead on two existing pools of capital.
Federal Reserve remittances
The first $6 billion of annual Fed remittances between 2025 and 2029 are redirected into the Bitcoin Purchase Program — existing government cashflows, not new appropriations.
Gold certificate revaluation
The Fed’s gold certificates have sat at a statutory $42.22 per troy ounce since 1973. Marking them to current market value — over 60 times higher — unlocks an enormous unrealised capital pool.
Decentralised secure reserve
A network of geographically distributed secure facilities across the United States. States may voluntarily store their own Bitcoin in segregated accounts within the same reserve.
Quarterly proof of reserves
The Treasury Secretary must publish quarterly public reports with cryptographically verifiable proof of ownership — a provision unique to Bitcoin’s on-chain architecture.
Section 7 of the bill explicitly codifies the right of individual Americans to hold Bitcoin in private wallets, free from government interference. A federal law that simultaneously builds a government reserve and enshrines self-custody as a protected right is an unusual combination. It is also a deliberate one. Lummis has been direct: “I’m a big proponent of self-custody, of individual wallets, of the sovereignty I have to store my wealth.”
“Bitcoin is not simply a technological opportunity, but a national imperative for America’s continued financial leadership in the 21st century.” — Senator Cynthia Lummis, Chair, Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets
From obscure proposal to White House priority
When Lummis first introduced the BITCOIN Act in July 2024, the Bitcoin community cheered and almost everyone else dismissed it. Limited bipartisan appetite, a disinterested White House, and a Senate Banking Committee with no urgency on crypto meant it went nowhere.
A lot changed in twelve months. Trump signed his executive order in March 2025, formalising a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve funded by existing criminal forfeitures — roughly 200,000 Bitcoin accumulated through federal seizures. The order stopped short of new acquisitions, but it was the clearest possible political signal. David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc, captured the logic: “The executive action clears the political lane and tells Congress this is a priority.”
As of early 2026, the United States holds an estimated 328,372 Bitcoin — the world’s largest state holder. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reaffirmed at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the administration is actively pursuing budget-neutral ways to expand that stockpile beyond forfeitures. The question is no longer whether the White House wants a larger reserve. The question is whether Congress will write it into law.
Proponents point to VanEck’s modelling: held to 2049, the reserve could be worth $42.4 trillion. Lummis frames it in terms her Wyoming constituents understand — a way to address the national debt without raising taxes or printing money, while ensuring America is not outpaced by adversaries quietly accumulating digital assets.
Skeptics raise harder questions. Bitcoin’s volatility makes it a risky line item on a national balance sheet. Senate Democrats have shown little appetite for a bill of this scale in an asset they consider speculative. And Trump’s executive order already delivered the political symbolism without the financial exposure — the case for going much further remains genuinely contested, even within the Republican caucus. The bill sits in the Senate Banking Committee. It has not come to a floor vote.
A clock running out on a senator who started early
In December 2025, Lummis announced she will not seek reelection. It was a quiet announcement from a senator who has never been quiet about Bitcoin — and it put a hard deadline on everything she still wants to accomplish.
Her portfolio is significant. She co-sponsored the GENIUS Act — signed into law in July 2025 as the first federal stablecoin legislation in U.S. history. She introduced a de minimis tax exemption bill for small Bitcoin transactions, pressing Treasury Secretary Bessent on it as recently as February 2026, with Bessent committing his Office of Tax Policy to work directly with her team. She has predicted the CLARITY Act market structure legislation should advance out of the Senate Banking Committee by late April 2026.
She will speak at Bitcoin 2026 at The Venetian in Las Vegas, 27–29 April — one of her last major public stages as a sitting senator, with the BITCOIN Act still unresolved. The BITCOIN Act, the CLARITY Act, and the stablecoin framework she co-sponsored are all in motion simultaneously — a legislative trifecta that, if any meaningful part clears the Senate in the coming months, would represent one of the most consequential individual contributions to crypto policy any U.S. lawmaker has ever made.
- Senate Banking Committee: The BITCOIN Act sits in committee. Watch for any markup session scheduling — that is the first real signal of movement.
- CLARITY Act timeline: Lummis predicted late April 2026 for committee advancement. Movement there could create momentum for the broader crypto legislative agenda.
- Bitcoin 2026 — 27–29 April, Las Vegas: Lummis is confirmed. Expect a policy update on the BITCOIN Act and what the final stretch of her Senate term looks like.
- Treasury rulemaking: Bessent’s “budget-neutral” language at Davos signals executive interest in expanding the reserve beyond seized assets — even without Congress acting.
- State-level reserves: Texas, New Hampshire, and Arizona have already passed or advanced state Bitcoin reserve legislation. If the federal bill stalls, state action accelerates regardless.
Whether the BITCOIN Act becomes law on her watch or becomes the blueprint someone else eventually carries across the finish line, Cynthia Lummis has already changed the terms of the conversation. A sitting U.S. senator who bought Bitcoin in 2013, wore the lapel pin to the Senate floor, and spent a decade writing the legislation — that is not a character the political establishment produced. It’s one that produced itself.
CCS Exclusive · Legislation Explained · 29 March 2026
