Trump's Bitcoin Reserve Stalls on Who Has Authority to Hold It

The strategic Bitcoin reserve President Trump promised early in his term is stuck on a question that should have been settled first: who is legally allowed to run it. Bloomberg reports the plan is snarled in legal and jurisdictional disputes, and the central fight is whether the U.S. Treasury even has the authority to manage the reserve.

Who holds the keys

The debate has moved past whether to build the reserve and onto where to house it. According to people familiar with the talks, officials are now weighing whether the reserve should sit under the Commerce Department instead of Treasury. That is not a filing-cabinet detail. It decides which agency controls the coins and answers to Congress if they lose value.

What's actually inside

The reserve was never meant to be funded by fresh purchases. Its main source is Bitcoin the government already holds, seized through criminal or civil forfeiture, alongside a separate digital asset inventory. Trump's executive order told Treasury and Commerce to design a "budget-neutral" acquisition strategy, meaning any additions cannot raise costs for taxpayers. Turning that instruction into a working plan is part of what has stalled.

The volatility problem

Then there is the matter of time. Officials are split on whether the government can commit to holding Bitcoin indefinitely when the price moves the way it does. A reserve that swings in value is a hard thing for a federal balance sheet to carry, and no one has settled how to account for it.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston said the administration is still evaluating the best structure for the reserve and the digital asset inventory, framing it as part of Trump's goal of making the U.S. a global center for crypto. For now, evaluating is all it is doing. The order exists. The coins exist. The agency to run them does not.