It would establish an official US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, require a 20-year minimum holding period for government-held Bitcoin, mandate regular reporting and independent audits, and direct officials to study how the government could acquire more Bitcoin without raising taxes or increasing borrowing.
The federal government currently holds roughly 328,000 Bitcoin.
The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act passed the House Ways and Means Committee 38 to 5. The bill would exempt small crypto transaction fees under $10 from taxation, extend existing wash-sale rules to digital assets, and align tax treatment of crypto lending more closely with traditional securities lending.
If enacted, the reserve bill would give Bitcoin a formal, long-term role in US federal reserves, locking existing holdings in place for two decades while opening a path to acquire more. The tax bill would give crypto investors clearer guidance in several key areas, including the treatment of staking and mining rewards and the application of wash-sale rules to digital assets.
Neither bill has been signed into law. Both still require approval from the full House and the Senate before reaching the president’s desk, and Congress’s approaching election recess narrows the window for further action.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});This progress stands in contrast to the CLARITY Act, the crypto industry’s primary market-structure legislation, which failed to clear a Senate cloture vote this week amid unresolved ethics disputes.
With that broader framework stalled, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission continue developing crypto rules independently, relying on their existing statutory authority rather than new legislation from Congress.
Could these narrower bills eventually deliver the clearer US framework for Bitcoin ownership and digital-asset taxation that the CLARITY Act was meant to provide? That now depends on whether either bill survives a shrinking legislative calendar and a Senate with little appetite for crypto tax issues so far.
