This year’s rapid surge in U.S. states’ interest to put public money into cryptocurrencies before the federal government can establish a strategic reserve of digital assets has encountered mixed results after five such efforts flamed out, though Utah remains a single vote away from the finish line and Texas reportedly advanced a bill to its state Senate.
Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota have fallen short of the mark in legislative efforts to put public money into crypto. Others — most notably Utah — have made significant progress toward passing bills that could tie their financial health to the digital assets markets, and the ground is shifting by the hour.
The U.S. Congress and President Donald Trump have made noise about a federal strategic digital assets reserve, with the idea’s public campaign stemming from the Bitcoin 2024 stage in Nashville, Tennessee, back before Trump won his election and Republicans rose to the majorities in Congress. Trump has spoken broadly in favor of the notion, which has also been more aggressively advocated by MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor and pitched by Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who helms the crypto subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee.
Many of the states raced to beat the feds to the punch, but in the weeks that have marked this trend, the market value of the asset most of the efforts are talking about — bitcoin (BTC) — has slipped considerably from the post-election euphoria that seemed to spur enthusiasm.
Read More: U.S. Bitcoin Reserve May Be Coming, But States Are Winning the Race
The drop in price to about $83,000 from a Trump inauguration-day high of $106,000 has been coupled with another high-profile exchange hack at Bybit that reportedly made off with more crypto than thieves have ever previously snatched in one outing. These setbacks may have further dampened the goodwill of state-government enthusiasts.
“That sense of urgency appears to have abated now,” said Johnny Garcia, a managing director at VeChain Foundation who has been following the state actions. “My view is states have some breathing room to assess and to contemplate a way forward.”
Montana and North Dakota saw clear losses when their legislatures considered the idea of state-level crypto reserves. Both legislatures voted to reject the bills. The other three states where the initiatives failed saw those rejections happen at the committee level.
Meanwhile, Utah’s legislation to allow the crypto investment of up to 5% of certain public accounts has cleared the state house and a senate committee on its way to consideration by the entire senate there. But getting that vote is never a certainty in the limited windows most states give to their legislative activity.
Story Continues
