Dan Patrick and Bitcoin: The Asset, Not the Megawatts

Is Dan Patrick pro-Bitcoin or anti-Bitcoin?

He is pro-Bitcoin and mining-skeptical, and the two are not in tension - they are the same worldview applied to two different things. As lieutenant governor, Patrick presides over the Texas Senate and sets its agenda, which makes his priorities unusually consequential: a bill he elevates moves, and a bill he shelves does not. He elevated the Texas Bitcoin Reserve - announced as a priority on January 30, 2025, placed on his Top 40 list, passed with bipartisan votes on March 6, 2025 - and gave the asset its plainest endorsement from any Texas official: “Some have called Bitcoin ‘digital gold,’ and I believe its limited supply and decentralized nature make it a critical asset.”^[9][2][1] The same man spent 2023 and 2024 applying the brake to the industry's grid economics. Both halves are real, and the dates show they were held simultaneously.

What was SB 1751, and what did Patrick's Senate do?

Senate Bill 1751 was the 88th session's attempt to discipline the mines' relationship with ERCOT: it would have capped miners' participation in demand response - the programs that pay large loads to power down when the grid is stressed - at 10% of any program, and rolled back tax abatements for the industry.^[4] The Chamber of Digital Commerce, the Texas Blockchain Council, and the Satoshi Action Fund wrote jointly urging Patrick to oppose it; the Senate he presides over passed it 30–1 on April 12, 2023.^[11][3] It died that May in a House committee - the closest call the Texas mining industry has had in a legislature, chronicled with the full statutory record on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline.^[5]

What did Patrick mean by the “Wild Wild West”?

By June 2024 the numbers had caught up with the 2023 instinct. After ERCOT testimony on load growth, Patrick posted that Texas wants data centers, “but it can't be the Wild Wild West of data centers and crypto miners crashing our grid and turning the lights off.”^[6][8] Mining load on ERCOT was running near 2,600 megawatts - roughly the draw of Austin - with about as much again approved to connect, and AI data centers queuing behind them.^[6] The warning reads differently now than it did then: two years later, Governor Abbott's June 2026 ratepayer directive ordered large loads to fund their own grid costs - the Patrick concern, translated into executive policy, told in Greg Abbott and Bitcoin.

What was Patrick's role in the Texas Bitcoin Reserve?

Prioritizer, floor manager, and closer. The reserve was authored by Senator Charles Schwertner, but it moved because Patrick put it among his session priorities and onto the Top 40 list that organizes the Senate's calendar.^[9][2] His March 6, 2025 statement framed the stakes nationally - President Trump “has stated unequivocally that he intends to make the United States the cryptocurrency capital” - and staked the Texas claim inside that race: he had “promised to make a Texas Bitcoin Reserve a priority to solidify Texas' leadership in the digital age.”^[1] Governor Abbott signed SB 21 on June 20, 2025.^[10] Execution then passed to the comptroller's desk: Kelly Hancock made the first purchase in November 2025, and Don Huffines has held the reserve since August 1, 2026. The fund's mechanics and current status - the $10 million, the custody transition, the advisory committee - live on the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve reference.

The honest counterweight: the industry's case against him

The mining industry's criticism of Patrick is straightforward and worth stating plainly: demand response is not a subsidy but a service - miners are paid because turning off two gigawatts in minutes is genuinely valuable to a stressed grid - and SB 1751 would have punished the one industry that shows up voluntarily for curtailment.^[4][11] The counter-counterpoint is also real: when a single industry collects outsized credits for powering down, residential ratepayers notice, and a presiding officer who ignored that would not be doing his job. Texas ended up splitting the difference - SB 1751 died, the mines kept growing, and the cost-allocation question moved to the PUC. That is not a loose end; it is federalism's version of a negotiated settlement.

Where does Dan Patrick's Bitcoin record stand today?

As of August 2026: the reserve Patrick prioritized holds $10 million and is moving to direct custody; the mining discipline he wanted arrived not through SB 1751 but through the June 2026 executive directive on large-load costs; and the 90th Legislature, convening January 2027, will test which face of the record leads - more coin for the reserve, more rules for the megawatts, or, on current form, both at once. The two-sided record is the story, and this page will keep tracking both sides of it.