Texas Senate to Debate Bitcoin Reserve

The Texas Senate is set to hold a public hearing tomorrow to discuss the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserve. The initiative, authored by Republican Texas state Senator Charles Schwertner, aims to diversify the state’s cash reserves by incorporating Bitcoin holdings.

The proposed legislation would authorize the state comptroller to invest in cryptocurrencies, provided they meet certain criteria. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with a market capitalization larger than $500 billion over the past 12 months, making it eligible for the reserve.

In Georgia, Senate Bill 178 was recently introduced, which, if passed, would allow the state treasurer to invest up to 5% of state funds in BTC. Some states like Wisconsin have already been holding BTC-based products for some time.

While state legislators make moves to adopt Bitcoin, the federal government is also taking a look at the cryptocurrency. David Sacks, the Trump administration’s Crypto Czar, has stated that the President’s new working group on digital assets will first consider whether the US government should hold Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

Sacks said, “One of the things that the President instructed us to do was to evaluate the idea for a Bitcoin reserve. So that is one of the first things we’re going to look at as part of the internal working group of the administration. We’re still in the very early stages of this, but that’s one of the first things we’re going to look at, is the feasibility of a Bitcoin reserve.”