in effect
This is Executive Order 14233, signed March 6, 2025 by the President, directing federal agencies to consolidate the government’s cryptocurrency holdings. It creates two new holding structures managed by the Treasury Department: a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” for Bitcoin and a “United States Digital Asset Stockpile” for other cryptocurrencies. It instructs agencies to inventory and transfer these assets and to study how to manage them going forward.
The Treasury Secretary must set up offices to hold custodial accounts for both the Bitcoin Reserve and the Digital Asset Stockpile, funded with cryptocurrency the government obtained through criminal or civil forfeiture or as penalties. Bitcoin placed in the Reserve cannot be sold and is to be held as a long-term reserve asset. Within 30 days, every agency must review its authority to transfer its crypto and report to Treasury, and must give a full accounting of what it holds to Treasury and the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets. Within 60 days, Treasury must deliver an evaluation of the legal and investment issues, including whether new legislation is needed. Treasury and Commerce may develop strategies to acquire more Bitcoin only if those strategies are budget-neutral and add no cost to taxpayers, while no additional non-Bitcoin assets may be acquired except through forfeiture or penalties unless further action is taken.
The main actors are the Treasury Department (which runs both accounts), the Commerce Department, the Attorney General, and every federal agency that currently holds seized or forfeited cryptocurrency, all of which face reporting and transfer duties. The order also carves out that seized assets can still be returned to identified crime victims, used for law enforcement, shared with state and local partners, or applied to existing legal obligations. The order states it creates no legal rights that any person or outside party can enforce against the government.