Trump’s Bitcoin reserve can’t buy Bitcoin without Congress, says Witt

The US has a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. What it doesn’t have is permission to go shopping.

Patrick Witt, former executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said the administration needs explicit authorization from Congress before it can buy Bitcoin on the open market for the reserve.

His comments, made during a podcast on November 9, 2026, put a firm legal ceiling on one of the crypto industry’s favorite hopes: the federal government as a steady, deep-pocketed buyer.

Willing buyer, locked wallet

According to Witt, President Donald Trump is still interested in acquiring Bitcoin for the reserve.

The obstacle is a rider attached to the National Defense Authorization Act. That provision means open-market purchases would require Congress to sign off explicitly, and it raises questions about whether buying without that approval would be legal at all.

The reserve itself was created by Executive Order 14233 on March 6, 2025. Its design centers on holding Bitcoin the government obtains through federal forfeitures, not coins it buys.

The order also directed Treasury and Commerce to explore acquisition strategies that would be cost-neutral, meaning they wouldn’t add to the taxpayer’s bill. To date, no such purchases have taken place.

Estimates of the government’s Bitcoin holdings range from 200,000 to 328,000 BTC, gathered mainly through seizures.

Congress has a bill. It isn’t law.

There is legislation moving that touches the reserve. The American Reserve Modernization Act, H.R. 8957, cleared the House Financial Services Committee on September 16, 2026.

The vote was 28-21, split along partisan lines.

The bill’s focus is largely operational. It deals with custody, sets a 20-year holding period for Bitcoin, and requires annual transparency reporting.

Still, the measure has not passed the full House or the Senate.

Final authority over the reserve’s future rests with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. For now, the work underway is concentrated on custody infrastructure and legal compliance rather than new acquisitions.

Why an executive order isn’t enough

Witt also pointed to the political difficulty of making the reserve permanent in a divided Congress. The core problem is durability.

An executive order can be undone by the next administration with the stroke of a pen. A reserve built on that foundation is only as stable as the next election result.

Legislation would change that calculation. A statute would require another act of Congress to unwind, which is a much higher bar than a new president signing a new order.

The budget-neutral options floated so far include gold revaluation and asset conversions. Both would require further review and action from Treasury before anything happens.

Gold revaluation would mean updating the accounting value of the government’s gold holdings, potentially freeing up paper value for other uses. Asset conversions would swap existing holdings into Bitcoin. Neither has moved past the exploratory stage.

What this means for the market and the reserve

For investors, Witt’s remarks recalibrate a widely held expectation. The idea of Washington as an active Bitcoin buyer has circulated since the reserve was announced, but the legal path to that outcome runs straight through Capitol Hill.

The signals worth tracking are fairly clear. The first is whether H.R. 8957 gets a floor vote in the House and what form it takes if it does.

The second is whether Treasury, under Bessent, advances any of the budget-neutral paths beyond review. Movement on gold revaluation or asset conversions would be the first concrete sign that acquisition is back on the table.

The third is whether lawmakers address the NDAA rider directly. Explicit authorization for purchases would be a far bigger step than anything currently in H.R. 8957, which centers on custody and holding rules.

There’s also the long-term political risk Witt flagged. If the reserve remains anchored only to an executive order, any future administration could reshape or dissolve it.