Giovanni Capriglione: The Chairman Who Carried the Reserve

Who is Giovanni Capriglione, and why is he the House of this story?

Because every Texas Bitcoin statute that predates the reserve has his name on it. Capriglione is a Southlake businessman – physics at Worcester Polytechnic, an MBA from Santa Clara, a career in semiconductor design and then private equity – who won House District 98, northeast Tarrant County from Keller to Grapevine, by beating a sitting Republican in the 2012 primary.^[4][2][1] Speaker Phelan made him chair of Pensions, Investments and Financial Services in February 2023; Speaker Burrows made him the first chair of the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency in February 2025, a 13-member panel built around technology and contracting.^[10][17] He chairs the bipartisan Innovation and Technology Caucus.^[26] Where the rest of the cluster came to the asset as governors, lieutenant governors, comptrollers, and a surgeon, Capriglione came to it as an engineer who had already spent a decade writing the plumbing. The senator who wrote the reserve is on Charles Schwertner and Bitcoin; this is the representative who built what it sits on.

What Bitcoin laws did Capriglione write before the reserve?

Four, in the order Texas builds things: custody, definition, load, custodians. HB 483, filed December 10, 2014 and signed June 19, 2015, created the Texas Bullion Depository – the first state-run precious-metals depository in the country, and the template for everything after it: build the vault, add the functions later.^[5] In 2021 he joint-authored two bills with Representative Tan Parker that became law eight days apart: HB 1576, the Work Group on Blockchain Matters, and HB 4474, which wrote “virtual currency” into the Texas Uniform Commercial Code and gave a buyer who takes control of it clean title – the statute this site's legal reference calls the moment Texas defined the asset before it owned any.^[6][7] In 2023, as chairman, he authored HB 591, the severance-tax exemption for gas that would otherwise be flared and is instead burned at the wellhead – the miners' bill, signed June 2, 2023 – and HB 1666, the post-FTX ban on digital-asset service providers commingling customer funds, signed a week later.^[8][9] The full statute-by-statute record is on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline; the depository's 2025 sequel, the gold-and-silver tender law he joint-authored, is on Texas gold vs. Bitcoin.

What was Capriglione's reserve bill, and why didn't it pass?

HB 1598 was the custody-first design, and it lost to the investment-first one in his own committee. Two weeks after the 2024 election, on stage at the Texas Blockchain Summit in Dallas, he said a state reserve was “destined to happen somewhere. I'd rather it happen here first,” and that “it would be great if the community itself would participate in creating this.”^[11] On December 12, 2024, before the session opened, he filed it: a special fund inside the treasury under the comptroller, a five-year minimum hold on every coin, donations from Texans and governmental entities, state agencies converting any cryptocurrency they accept into Bitcoin, a biennial report, and a 2035 sunset – no appropriation.^[12][13] “Probably the biggest enemy of our investments is inflation,” he said that day; the Texas Blockchain Council announced it as “our partnership with Chairman Capriglione.”^[14][15] The Statesman set it against Senator Schwertner's outside-the-treasury design in January.^[16] Then the calendar decided: HB 1598 was referred to Delivery of Government Efficiency on March 12, 2025 and never heard; SB 21 was referred to the same committee on April 9 and reported out 8–4 on May 7.^[12][18] The chairman chose the bill the Lieutenant Governor had prioritized over the bill that was his. His hold period and his donation channel are catalogued with the session's other unbuilt wings on the bills that died.

How did Capriglione carry SB 21 through the House?

As sponsor, floor manager, and conference chair. On May 21, 2025 he moved SB 21 through the House 101–42 – 21 Republicans and 21 Democrats opposed – with an amendment restoring the donation clause the Senate had stripped.^[19][20] “This reserve not only strengthens our fiscal sovereignty, but positions Texas as a forward-thinking state prepared for the evolution of global finance,” he told the chamber.^[19][21] On May 27 he was named chair of the House conferees; the conference removed the donation clause again and trimmed the Senate's $21 million rider to $10 million, and both chambers adopted the report on May 29.^[18][20] Abbott signed it June 20, effective immediately.^[18] The same June, the governor signed three more of his: HB 150, the Texas Cyber Command, on June 2; HB 149, the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, on June 22 – Capriglione's bill with Schwertner as Senate sponsor, the mirror image of SB 21; and HB 1056, gold and silver as legal tender, the same day.^[23][22][24] The law as it operates is on the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve reference; the man who bought the coins is on Kelly Hancock and Bitcoin.

The honest counterweight: the unheard bill, the council, and the red ink

Three things cut against the record, and each is in it. First, the chairman did not hear his own bill. HB 1598's five-year hold and donation channel were the discipline the enacted reserve lacks, and the committee that could have heard them was his; he gave its calendar to the Senate's design instead.^[12][18] Second, the turn. On July 23, 2025, a month after saying he would run again, he announced he would not seek an eighth term – “I also feel in my heart that I've accomplished what I set out to do” – and on January 5, 2026 became president of the Texas Blockchain Council, the association that announced his reserve bill as a partnership, while still holding House District 98 until January 2027.^[25][26] Public Citizen answered the same day, calling the council “an enemy of transparency” for suing the U.S. Department of Energy to stop it collecting data on miners, and asking the new president to reverse the position.^[27] Third, the ledger: the $10 million he carried was deployed in November and December 2025 near $91,000 and $87,000 a coin, and by March 2, 2026 was worth about $7.8 million.^[29]

The fair reading keeps all three and weighs them. A chairman who kills his own bill to pass the Lieutenant Governor's is doing the job the House exists to do; the reserve is law because the House had a sponsor who preferred a statute to a credit. The council presidency is a sitting legislator running the industry that lobbied his committee, and the seven-month gap between the retirement notice and the appointment is the record's own answer to whether it was planned – the question Public Citizen asked is the right one, and it is his to answer at the November summit. The ledger is month four of a ten-year argument he made in December 2024 with the word “inflation.” What the record establishes beyond dispute is narrower and more durable: for ten years, when Texas needed a Bitcoin statute drafted, the House member who drafted it was Capriglione.

Where does the Capriglione record stand today?

As of September 2026: he holds House District 98 until the 90th Legislature convenes on January 12, 2027, and will not be in it. Keller Mayor Armin Mizani, whom he beat in the 2018 primary, won the March 3, 2026 Republican primary for the seat with 53.5%; Cate Brennan is the Democratic nominee; the general is November 3.^[28][25] Two weeks after that, on November 18–19, he hosts his first North American Blockchain Summit as the council's president, at the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington.^[30] The reserve he carried is in the hands of Comptroller Don Huffines, its custodian still unawarded, its first biennial report due December 31 – tracked on the custody watch. The organizer who ran the council before him is on Lee Bratcher and Bitcoin; the senator whose bill he chose is on Charles Schwertner and Bitcoin. When the 90th Legislature takes up the expansions drafted in 2025's dead bills, the House will be looking for the member who used to write them – and he will be in the gallery, lobbying.