An announcement on the long-awaited US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) will be made “in the coming weeks,” Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said at CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on Wednesday.
The federal effort to inventory, centralize and secure bitcoins held by the US. and other digital assets have been running in the background for months, Witt said. Following President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for bitcoin and other crypto assets to be reserved in long-term holdings, the White House halted what Witt characterized as “fire sale” liquidations during the previous administration and began auditing which cryptocurrencies each agency held.
“We have heard stories and confirmed some of them about cold wallets being kept in desk drawers at various agencies,” he said.
Witt cited a recent exploit involving assets held by the U.S. Marshals Service as motivating evidence for centralization. Bloomberg reported in January that the Marshals Service was investigating a possible hack of US government digital asset accounts, after on-chain researcher ZachXBT claimed that a hacker stole more than $60 million by the end of 2025, including funds from wallets seized by the government.
“It’s an example of why it was so necessary for the president to establish the SBR and direct agencies to take these assets very seriously and properly safeguard them,” Witt said. “Custody is unique for digital assets.”
Witt declined to reveal how many bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies the federal government currently holds.
“The first thing is that we want to get our own house in order. We want to properly safeguard and custody these assets before we discuss any details about it,” he said. He suggested the next announcement would address some of the open questions about size and structure, but said he did not want to “get ahead of any of the other directors involved.”
He also clarified that the reserve will not automatically absorb all the newly seized assets. Cryptocurrencies seized in active legal proceedings are in pending status until the seizure is finalized, he said, and the assets are potentially returned to victims through restitution before being moved to the bitcoin reserve or the separate reserve provided for other crypto assets.
As for the legal underpinnings, Witt said much of the staff’s work has focused on general counsel-level questions about what authorities allow agencies to keep assets, for how long, and whether they are subject to recovery by Congress.
“This really hadn’t been explored until the president signed the executive order,” he said.
Codification will need to go through Congress, Witt said, citing Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ BITCOIN Act in the Senate and Rep. Nick Begich’s American Reserve Modernization Act, a renamed update of the same bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“This must always be accompanied by appropriate legislation,” Witt said.
The likely need for legislative support for the formation of the bitcoin reserve has been a major limitation in this process. It’s unclear when Congress will find the bandwidth and momentum to push through a reservation bill.
