Agency Turf War Stalls Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Plan
A legal dispute between Treasury and Commerce over authority to manage the reserve is delaying the policy, even as Bitcoin prices rose Monday.
One of the signature crypto policy ambitions of the Trump administration has hit an unexpected bureaucratic wall. A power struggle between the Treasury and Commerce departments over who has the legal authority to manage a planned Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is holding up the initiative, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is now actively working with both agencies to find a legally workable structure, but no resolution appears imminent.
The core problem is not political will — President Trump signed an executive order directing the reserve's creation — but legal architecture. The original plan called for the reserve to sit within Treasury, stocked with Bitcoin seized through federal asset forfeitures and potentially supplemented by future government purchases. Doubts emerged, however, over whether Treasury could legally hold an asset as volatile as Bitcoin indefinitely. Commerce has since emerged as an alternative custodian, though that option carries its own unresolved questions about statutory authority.
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The federal government's stake in this debate is substantial. Washington collectively holds more than $20 billion worth of Bitcoin spread across various agencies, making it one of the largest sovereign holders of the asset anywhere in the world. How that stockpile is ultimately managed — and whether it can grow — carries meaningful implications for Bitcoin's long-term supply dynamics, given the government's scale relative to total circulating supply.
Markets, for now, appear largely unbothered by the institutional wrangling. Bitcoin rose on Monday even as the legal uncertainty lingered, and even against a notable headwind: data showed that Michael Saylor's Strategy firm sold 3,588 Bitcoin between June 29 and July 5. The resilience suggests traders are treating the reserve question as a slow-moving structural development rather than a near-term price catalyst. Still, with Bitcoin sitting nearly 50% below its October all-time high, the eventual outcome of the agency dispute could matter more than current price action implies.
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