A new bill in Congress would fund a 1 million bitcoin reserve by closing a 107x accounting gap on U.S. gold.
Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 (ARMA) on Wednesday with 21 cosponsors.
The bill would authorize the U.S. Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 bitcoin per year for five years. It is a rebranding of the original BITCOIN Act co-introduced by Begich and Senator Cynthia Lummis, and would codify Trump's March 2025 Strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order into permanent law.
The bill classifies bitcoin as a "Tier 1" strategic reserve asset, putting it on the same legal footing as gold. All acquisitions must be budget-neutral. The funding mechanism is revaluing Federal Reserve gold certificates from their statutory price of $42.22 per ounce, set in 1973, to current market prices. At today's gold price of $4,528, that revaluation would unlock over $1.17 trillion in paper gains on the government's 8,133 metric tons of gold without new taxpayer debt.
The bill ends the practice of auctioning seized bitcoin. All future seizures go directly to the Strategic Reserve instead of being liquidated by the U.S. Marshals Service. Bitcoin in the reserve would be held for a minimum of 20 years, with the only exception being sales to reduce the national debt.
Federal custody standards include geographic distribution of private keys across air-gapped facilities, multi-signature governance requiring authorization from the Treasury, the Fed, and an independent third agency, and investment in quantum-resistant cryptographic upgrades. This is the most technically detailed bitcoin custody language ever written into a Congressional bill.
The U.S. government has been carrying gold on its books at $42.22 an ounce for over 50 years while the market price surged past $4,500. ARMA would close that gap and use the difference to buy an asset that cannot be debased. Whether it passes is one question. That it exists with bipartisan support and 21 cosponsors on day one is the signal.