A growing number of U.S. states are moving forward with legislation to create strategic Bitcoin reserves, with Utah emerging as the frontrunner.
Speaking with Roundtable host Scott Melker, Satoshi Action Fund CEO Dennis Porter revealed that more than 50 pieces of Bitcoin-related legislation are in progress across at least 22 states.
“There’s a big difference between when we started in June of 2022,” Porter said. “We were fighting tooth and nail just to get a lawmaker to take a call. Now, we have over 50 pieces of legislation covering everything from strategic Bitcoin reserves to protecting Bitcoin rights.”
Porter pointed to Utah as the closest state to enacting a Bitcoin reserve law. “Utah has not only passed it out of the House committee and floor, but it also just passed the Senate committee,” he said. “It is headed towards its very final vote in the Senate. We will know in the next three weeks if Utah will become the first state to pass this into law.”
Other states aren’t far behind. North Carolina has strong support, including from the Speaker of the House, while Oklahoma is seeing multiple competing Bitcoin reserve bills, with lawmakers racing to be the first to pass theirs. Texas, a key player in the Bitcoin mining industry, also has “a lot of political capital” behind its effort. Montana is another state Porter is optimistic about.
While not every bill will succeed, Porter is confident that at least four to five states will pass their Bitcoin reserve legislation this year. “A lot of them are going to fail. That’s just the way policy works,” he admitted. “But we believe we’ll get around four to five of these bills passed into law.”
Once one state passes the law, others are likely to follow quickly. “No one wants to be first,” Porter explained. “But once the first state does it, all the other lawmakers start to say, ‘Oh, well, we got to start copying them. We don’t want to be left behind.’”
Melker agreed, noting that Bitcoin has strong public support. “There really is no anti-crypto army left,” he said. “It seems that there are only people who are either in favor of this or completely indifferent.”
Efforts to establish state-backed Bitcoin reserves have hit roadblocks, with at least six U.S. states rejecting proposals. Despite these setbacks, lawmakers in 18 states are still pushing forward, determined to become the first to hold Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.
Montana’s bill, which aimed to invest up to $50 million in Bitcoin, stablecoins, and precious metals, failed in a House vote. Fiscal conservatives opposed using public funds for what they saw as risky speculation. South Dakota also rejected a bill that proposed allocating 10% of state funds to Bitcoin. Meanwhile, North Dakota took a more cautious approach by introducing a study on the feasibility of a Bitcoin reserve—but even that was voted down.
Story Continues
