States Dive Into Crypto, Raising the Prospect of a National Bitcoin Reserve

Almost half of the state governments in the U.S. are either on a path toward putting some of their money into crypto or already have

Nearly half of the state governments in the U.S. are either investing — or considering to invest — a portion of their funds in crypto. This surge in interest from state governments in tying their financial futures to the digital-assets markets comes largely after U.S. President Donald Trump showed support for a national stockpile of digital assets.

In the recent surge of crypto legislative or financial efforts at the state level, 21 states are investing or looking into investing — generally in the industry's leading token, bitcoin (BTC), and sometimes also in less volatile stablecoins that are designed to match the value of the U.S. dollar, according to a CoinDesk analysis.

With states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, Utah and Texas already digging into legislation to open public funds to buy cryptocurrencies, such initiatives may outpace the effort in Congress targeting a so-called Strategic Bitcoin R

Sixteen state legislatures are looking at bills to either establish digital assets stockpiles or to allow their state retirement funds to be partially invested in crypto, most of them introduced in recent weeks. Officials in another three states are engaged in serious discussions about joining in, and the money managers for two states — Michigan and Wisconsin — have already dipped parts of their public employees' retirement portfolios into crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

If the states begin pouring portions of their public funds into bitcoin and other digital assets, it would potentially lock down billions of dollars of the tokens for extended periods, boosting the value of the assets still openly circulating. Another effect: The states are potentially setting up millions of people to have personal stakes in the health of the crypto sector — whether they want to or not.

In several of the proposals, governments are looking to follow in the footsteps of Michigan and Wisconsin in pushing parts of their retirement funds and state pension investments into digital assets. Retired school teachers, law enforcement officers and other public employees will watch some of their financial security become dependent on the fluctuations of the crypto markets.

Other pieces of legislation would instruct state treasurers to spend as much as 10% of their public funds on a strategic reserve, with some specifying that qualifying digital assets must have at least a $500 billion market cap, leaving only bitcoin currently meeting the mark.

Arizona and Utah are building a lead after getting their efforts passed by legislative committees, but other states weighing some version of a crypto bill also include Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming. Others, such as Alabama, Florida and Kentucky are considering proposals from state officials or on the verge of pursuing legislation. The states interested in digital assets reserves are predominantly Republican-majority in their politics, and the reasons the lawmakers say they're backing the bills include investment diversity and embracing technological innovation.

The amount put away by the states could eventually be overshadowed by the U.S. government's own reserve, if that effort comes to pass. President Trump, in his wider executive order on U.S. crypto policy, called for his administration to "evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile." The order suggested it may be built from government seizures of crypto in criminal cases.

The idea had initially been pitched by Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who devotes much of her political bandwidth to supporting crypto and was named as the first chair of the Senate Banking Committee's digital assets subcommittee. Her bill to set up a U.S. reserve calls for the country to obtain about $20 billion worth of the tokens in the first year and to get another 200,000 in each of the next four years, until the U.S. is eventually holding a million bitcoin.

While Lummis' pitch has called it a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve," it's not — like the petroleum reserve — designed for deployment when economic conditions warrant it. It's structured more as a long-term investment, requiring the U.S. to hold the assets for at least 20 years.

That would be almost 5% of the eventual, finite supply of global bitcoin going untouched for at least two decades. Combined with whatever the states seek to stockpile, U.S. governments would secure a significant percentage of the asset, in addition to the towering reserves held by the U.S. ETF issuers such as BlackRock and Grayscale and corporate investors led by MicroStrategy.

The states' interest in bitcoin potentially lands Satoshi Nakamoto's ultimate exercise of financial outsiders firmly in the realm of the insiders, adding the asset to the core functions of government. The Bitcoin white paper meant to establish a system of transactions outside of the need of financial-firm intermediaries or government oversight.

States setting up bitcoin funds managed in part by new laws could become some of the most stable of the industry's institutional investors. And naming bitcoin as a "strategic reserve" puts the digital tokens on par with gold and oil as economic mainstays, despite the very different nature of crypto