The White House is on the verge of a formal announcement on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — and the official leading the charge says the hard part is done.

Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, told an interviewer this week that the administration has cleared a major legal hurdle in standing up the reserve.

“We’ll have an announcement,” Witt said. “I wish I could say more… It’s a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets.”

The signal follows a similar declaration Witt made at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, where he told the crowd an update was coming within weeks.

President Trumpsigned the executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on March 6, 2025.

Since then, Witt says his deputy Harry John has driven the interagency process: identifying what legal authorities exist, commissioning the necessary legal memos, and building a custody and reporting infrastructure across federal agencies that were designed for gold, not private keys.

The reserve holds an estimated328,372 BTC, roughly 1.6% of total global supply, accumulated through law enforcement seizures, including the Silk Road takedown, the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery, and years of criminal forfeitures.

A key provision of the executive order explicitly prohibits the Treasury from selling any portion of these accumulated Bitcoins.

The urgent need for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve's robust security mandate was underscored by a significant breach at the U.S. Marshals Service.

In late 2025, a government contractor, John Daghita, was allegedly responsible for stealing over $46 million in cryptocurrency from USMS custody accounts.

This incident, along with a separate $24 million theft traced back to October 2024, highlighted the critical vulnerabilities in government handling of digital assets.

Witt emphasized that such incidents served as a stark justification for the President's establishment of the SBR.

Recognizing the inherent vulnerability of an executive order, which can be rescinded by a new president, legislative efforts are now advancing through Congress to solidify the reserve's legal standing.

Representative Nick Begich has rebranded the original BITCOIN Act as the American Reserves Modernization Act (ARMA).

This proposed legislation would authorize the U.S. Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 Bitcoins annually for a period of five years, with the stipulation that these holdings would be locked for a minimum of 20 years.

Senator Cynthia Lummis is also actively pushing for a congressional vote on these measures before the upcoming summer recess, as midterm campaigning is expected to reduce available floor time.

Should the American Reserves Modernization Act pass, the Treasury's first open-market Bitcoin purchase is projected for the fourth quarter of 2026, a landmark event that would position the U.S. as the first sovereign nation to actively accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.