Bitcoin has crashed since hitting an all-time high in October last year, losing 40% of its value and plunging the crypto market into a brutal winter crisis.
Sign up now for CryptoCodex—A free crypto newsletter that will get you ahead of the market
The bitcoin price dropped to recent lows of $60,000 per bitcoin in February, with a stock market rally failing to lift bitcoin and the wider crypto market and traders braced for a price earthquake.
Now, as early adopters declare this tiny cryptocurrency bitcoin’s potential successor, the White House’s top crypto adviser, Patrick Witt, has confirmed an “breakthrough” update on president Donald Trump’s U.S. bitcoin reserve.
Sign up now for the free CryptoCodex—A daily five-minute newsletter for traders, investors and the crypto-curious that will get you up to date and keep you ahead of the bitcoin price and crypto market swings
U.S. president Donald Trump ordered the creation of a bitcoin strategic reserve last year, though the bitcoin price has slumped since then.
Getty Images
“We’ll have an announcement,” Witt, the executive director of the president’s council of advisors for digital assets, told podcaster Scott Melker, referring to Trump’s March 2025 executive order that established a strategic bitcoin reserve and a U.S. digital asset stockpile.
“I wish I could say more. It’s a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets.”
Witt’s comments have been cheered by bitcoin and crypto market watchers.
“Buckle up,” David Bailey, the chief executive of struggling bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto who advised the Trump campaign on bitcoin ahead of the 2024 election, posted to X, while a crypto fan account called news of the announcement, “huge.”
Last month, Witt teased the announcement during a panel discussion at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, telling attendees that Trump’s executive order “needs to be followed up with legislation” but that the White House was working on “a big step forward from the executive branch side.”
Sign up now for CryptoCodex—A free crypto newsletter that will get you ahead of the market
The bitcoin price has bounced back from its recent lows but remains well under its 2025 peak of $126,000 per bitcoin.
Forbes Digital Assets
The bitcoin reserve was seeded with the 200,000 bitcoin the government already held from criminal and civil asset forfeiture proceedings, with Trump’s executive order prohibiting its sale.
Last month, U.S. lawmaker Nick Begich, a Republican from Alaska, said he planned to reintroduce legislation to Congress that would establish bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.
Speaking at the Las Vegas bitcoin conference, Begich said he plans to revive the so-called Bitcoin Act, rebranding it as the American Reserves Modernization Act (ARMA), that would see the U.S. buy 1 million bitcoin over five years using “budget-neutral strategies.”
“Why the renaming — because it’s so important for people both in Congress and across the nation to understand what we’re actually trying to do,” Begich said in comments reported by The Block. “We’re trying to make sure that bitcoin is treated like the reserve asset that it is.”