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1. Trump Bitcoin Reserve Faces a Legal Wall
The Trump bitcoin reserve cannot buy bitcoin on the open market without explicit approval from Congress, Patrick Witt, the former executive director of the President's Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, said in a podcast interview published November 9, 2026. Witt said President Donald Trump still wants the government to acquire bitcoin, but lawmakers hold the purse strings.
The comments draw a clear line under hopes that Washington would emerge as a steady buyer of the largest cryptocurrency. The United States does have a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, created by executive action in 2025, but the reserve has so far been filled with coins the government already owned rather than coins it went out and purchased.
Witt, who led the White House crypto council until October, framed the issue as a matter of authority rather than willingness. The administration, in his telling, is interested in adding to its holdings. What it lacks is a clear legal basis to spend federal money doing so.
2. Who Is Patrick Witt?
Patrick Witt served as executive director of the President's Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, the White House body that coordinates the administration's crypto policy work, until October. In that role he was one of the most visible public voices on the reserve and on the administration's broader digital asset agenda.
Because he spoke after leaving the post, his remarks carry the weight of someone who saw the internal debates firsthand while no longer speaking on behalf of the White House. His assessment of the legal constraints therefore offers an unusually direct look at why the reserve has stayed static, even as the president's interest in expanding it has not faded.
3. Can the US Government Buy Bitcoin for the Reserve?
Not without Congress, according to Witt. He described outright open-market purchases as legally questionable because Congress controls federal spending, and he said concerns about such buying led lawmakers to attach a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act that bars it.
That rider requires explicit congressional approval before the government can buy bitcoin on the open market. Its practical effect is to remove any ambiguity about whether the executive branch could act alone. Even setting the rider aside, Witt suggested, there would be real doubt about whether purchases without congressional backing would hold up.
The National Defense Authorization Act is the annual bill that sets policy and spending levels for the Pentagon. Because it is considered must-pass legislation, lawmakers frequently use it as a vehicle for provisions that have little to do with defense, and a restriction on bitcoin buying fits that pattern.
The constitutional backdrop is straightforward. Under the US system, the power of the purse belongs to Congress. Federal agencies can only spend money that has been appropriated for a given purpose, which makes it difficult for any administration to commit public funds to a new type of asset through executive action alone.
4. How the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Was Built
President Trump created the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve through Executive Order 14233, signed on March 6, 2025. The order was designed around bitcoin the federal government obtains through criminal and civil forfeiture, meaning coins seized in law enforcement cases, rather than coins bought with taxpayer money.
Before the order, seized bitcoin was often auctioned off over time. The executive order changed that approach by directing that forfeited coins be held as a long-term reserve asset instead of being sold, effectively turning a by-product of enforcement actions into a national holding.
Forfeiture is the legal process through which the government takes ownership of property connected to crimes, such as funds tied to fraud, hacks or illicit marketplaces. Over the years, US agencies have accumulated a substantial amount of bitcoin this way, which is why the reserve could be established without spending a single dollar on new coins.
The order also told the Treasury and Commerce departments to explore budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, meaning methods that would not add to federal spending or require new appropriations. More than a year and a half later, no such purchases have taken place, and the government has not announced any program for buying bitcoin directly from the market.
The reserve sits under the Treasury Department, which is led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Any change to how it is funded or managed would ultimately run through his department.
5. Budget-Neutral Ideas Remain on the Drawing Board
Several budget-neutral options have been floated as ways to grow the reserve without new spending. One is a revaluation of the government's gold holdings, which would update the accounting value of that gold to reflect market prices and could, in theory, free up value on paper to direct elsewhere.
Another is asset conversion, which would involve swapping some existing federal holdings into bitcoin. Both ideas remain exploratory and would need Treasury review before going anywhere. Neither has moved beyond the discussion stage.
The appeal of these approaches is political as much as financial. By avoiding a direct appropriation, they could sidestep a contentious vote on spending public money on a volatile asset. The difficulty is that each still raises legal and accounting questions that would need careful vetting, and the restriction attached to the defense bill limits how far the executive branch can go on its own.
6. What Is the American Reserve Modernization Act?
The American Reserve Modernization Act, known as H.R. 8957, is a House bill that would put the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on a statutory footing. The House Financial Services Committee advanced it on September 16, 2026, in a 28-21 vote that split along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed.
The bill focuses largely on how the reserve would operate rather than on buying more coins. It covers custody arrangements, sets a holding period of at least 20 years for bitcoin placed in the reserve and requires annual reporting to improve transparency about what the government holds.
Custody is a more pressing issue than it may appear. Bitcoin seized in different cases has historically been held by different agencies, and consolidating those coins under consistent security standards is a precondition for treating them as a single national reserve. The 20-year minimum holding period would also signal that the coins are meant to be kept through market cycles rather than sold when prices rise or fall, and the annual reporting requirement would give the public a regular accounting of what the government actually holds.
Committee approval is only an early step. The measure has not yet passed the full House, and it has not been taken up in the Senate. Both chambers would have to approve the same text before it could reach the president's desk.
7. Why an Executive Order Is Not Enough
Witt acknowledged that making the reserve permanent through legislation will be difficult in a divided Congress. "It's going to be hard. It's going to be really hard," he said of the effort to codify it.
The stakes of that effort come down to durability. An executive order can be reversed by a future president with the stroke of a pen. A statute, by contrast, can only be undone by another act of Congress, which requires majorities in both chambers and either a presidential signature or enough votes to override a veto.
That distinction matters for anyone weighing the long-term significance of the reserve. As long as it rests solely on executive action, its existence depends on the priorities of whoever occupies the White House. Writing it into law would give it the kind of permanence that supporters say a strategic reserve requires.
Witt's remarks also follow a period in which he repeatedly suggested that a major announcement on the reserve was close. Those earlier signals in 2026 did not result in any bitcoin purchases, and his latest comments shift the focus firmly back to Capitol Hill.
8. What the Trump Bitcoin Reserve Limits Mean for the Market
For bitcoin investors, the main takeaway is a reset of expectations. Some market participants had treated the prospect of steady government buying as a potential source of long-term demand. Witt's comments make clear that any such buying depends on legislation that has not yet been passed.
The reserve still matters as a signal. A government that holds bitcoin rather than selling seized coins removes a potential source of supply from the market and lends a degree of official recognition to the asset. But holding and buying are different things, and the latter is now firmly a question for lawmakers.
The remarks come as the broader crypto market has been under pressure, with bitcoin trading well below its highs. In that environment, the absence of a government buyer removes one of the more optimistic narratives that had circulated among traders.
9. What Comes Next for the Bitcoin Reserve
Three developments will shape the reserve's path. The first is whether H.R. 8957 reaches a vote on the House floor, and in what form. The second is whether the Treasury Department moves any of the budget-neutral options beyond internal review.
The third is whether lawmakers directly address the restriction in the National Defense Authorization Act, either by keeping it, loosening it or replacing it with an explicit purchase authority. Until one of those steps happens, the reserve will continue to grow only through seizures.
Underlying all three is the risk that an executive-order-based reserve could be dissolved by a future administration. For now, the government owns bitcoin and the president wants more of it, but the decision on whether Washington becomes a buyer rests with Congress.