Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Stalls as Federal Agencies Fight Over Control

The US strategic BBTC$63,104.00▲0.06% reserve, created by executive order in March, has stalled. Federal agencies are clashing over which department gets to control the holdings, Bloomberg reports, leaving the policy in limbo months after President Donald Trump signed it — with no public timeline for breaking the deadlock.

Trump signed the executive order on March 6, 2025, establishing both the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate United States Digital Asset Stockpile. The White House order states that government BTC deposited into the reserve “shall not be sold and shall be maintained as reserve assets of the United States.” The reserve was designed to hold Bitcoin seized from criminals rather than requiring new government purchases — a critical distinction that separates it from proposals critics have attacked as taxpayer-funded giveaways to existing holders. The order also created a Digital Asset Stockpile for other seized cryptocurrencies, though the Bitcoin reserve was positioned as the flagship initiative.

The snag, as reported by Bloomberg via Cointelegraph, centers on a question the executive order did not fully answer: which federal agency gets custody and control of the Bitcoin. Multiple agencies — including the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Secret Service, and the IRS — currently hold seized crypto under different legal frameworks. Consolidating those holdings under a single authority requires resolving jurisdictional and legal questions that the March order simply left on the table.

The implementation gap showed itself early. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said in May 2025 that the administration was still examining the legal implications of creating the Bitcoin reserve — a signal that the hard work of operationalizing the policy was only just beginning. David Sacks, the White House AI & Crypto Czar, publicly discussed the reserve and the executive order in a Bloomberg interview following the March signing. Neither he nor other officials laid out a detailed custody framework at the time.

The structural challenge here is not trivial. Seized crypto assets flow through different agencies depending on the nature of the underlying case — criminal forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, tax enforcement — and each path carries its own statutory requirements governing how assets are stored, accounted for, and eventually liquidated. The executive order’s no-sell mandate for Bitcoin upends the default practice of auctioning seized crypto, but it does not by itself transfer legal authority over those assets to a new custodian. Until that question gets an answer, the reserve exists on paper and nowhere else.

The stalemate is landing against an already skittish market backdrop. Bitcoin is currently trading at $63,138, down 0.12% over the past 24 hours but up 5.45% over the past seven days, with a market cap of approximately $1.266 trillion. The Fear & Greed Index sits at 27 out of 100 — deep into fear territory, even with BTC’s weekly gains. Bitcoin dominance remains high at 55.8% of the total $2.27 trillion crypto market, a sign that capital is still concentrated in BTC even as sentiment stays defensive.

The dispute carries weight well beyond Washington. Bloomberg reported in October 2025 that governments globally are eyeing a $75 billion pot of seized crypto assets for potential reserves, meaning other nations are watching closely how the US implements its own policy. If Washington cannot resolve a domestic custody dispute among its own agencies, the broader question of whether sovereign Bitcoin reserves are operationally viable stays wide open.

No timeline has been given. The administration has not publicly named which department it favors for custody. The policy that Trump framed as a first-mover advantage for the United States remains, for now, an executive order without an operator — and the interagency standoff shows no sign of breaking.