The Dead File: Texas Bitcoin Bills That Didn't Become Law

How does a bill die in Texas without a no vote?

Almost none of the bills above lost a vote - that is the first thing the dead file teaches. The Texas Legislature meets 140 days every two years, and the calendar is the real veto: a bill dies when it is referred to committee and never heard, heard and “left pending,” or reported out and placed on a floor calendar the chamber never reaches. When the 89th adjourned sine die on June 2, 2025, everything still pending lapsed at once.^[1][2][4][6] A death without a vote is also a death without a verdict, which is exactly why dead bills return: nothing above was rejected on the merits.

What was HJR 175, and how close did the right-to-transact come?

Closest of all. House Joint Resolution 175, by Representative Gerdes, proposed amending the Texas Constitution to establish the right of individuals to own, hold, and use a mutually agreed medium of exchange - cash, coin, bullion, digital currency - for trading and contracting.^[4] It passed the full House on May 9, 2025, and got its Senate Business & Commerce hearing on May 15, where it was left pending: five committee votes short of the two-thirds path to the November ballot. It is the natural constitutional companion to the transactional groundwork already in statute, surveyed in what Texas law says about Bitcoin, and the likeliest headline refile of the 90th session.

Why did the kiosk bills fail if both chambers wanted one?

Because they wanted their own. The House passed HB 2798 (kiosk disclosures and fees) on April 25, 2025; it crossed to the Senate and sat in Business & Commerce.^[5] The Senate passed SB 1705 (a full Finance Code Chapter 161 for kiosk registration and consumer protection) on May 15; it cleared its House committee without amendment and reached the General State Calendar on May 27 - where the clock beat it.^[6][12] Two majorities, zero laws. The failure has a price tag: Texans lose roughly $57 million a year to kiosk scams, per reporting through 2026, and the Department of Banking still lacks a registration regime for the machines.^[11][10] Consumer protection with two one-chamber majorities on record is as close to a sure early mover as the 90th session has.

What were the reserve designs Texas didn't choose?

Three, and the differences are instructive. Senator Schwertner's SB 778 was the opening draft - filed January 14, 2025, appropriation included - and died the procedural death of a bill superseded by its own successor, SB 21.^[1][13] Representative Capriglione's HB 1598 was the custody-first alternative: Bitcoin inside the state treasury, a minimum five-year hold, and a donation channel for citizens and governmental entities - discipline SB 21's investment-first design does not impose.^[2][7] And HB 4258, from Democratic Representatives Reynolds and Plesa, was the biggest number of the session: comptroller investment authority reported around $250 million plus up to $10 million for each municipality or county.^[3] The enacted reserve's full story lives on the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve reference; the dead designs are its unbuilt wings - the hold period, the donation channel, the local-government tier - each one a drafted, filed, and precedented idea waiting for a session that wants it.

What was cut from SB 21 itself?

Staking. Earlier drafts let the reserve stake eligible assets for yield; lawmakers removed staking authority before the final vote, keeping the fund to holding and investment. ^[8]

$11 million of the appropriation. A Senate budget rider floated $21 million to kick-start the reserve; the final figure settled at $10 million. ^[9]

Both cuts read as the Legislature buying certainty: a smaller, unstaked, plain-custody fund was the version that could pass with bipartisan cover - and did, told in Dan Patrick and Bitcoin. The trimmed $11 million and the staking authority now sit in the same place as the dead bills: on the table for the 90th.

What does the dead file predict for the 90th Legislature?

The 90th convenes in January 2027, and the file above is its draft agenda. Kiosk regulation returns with two one-chamber majorities and a $57-million-a-year reason.^[10] HJR 175 returns five votes from a ballot line. The reserve - by then expected to hold directly custodied Bitcoin, now in the hands of a comptroller who proposed a state Bitcoin reserve back in 2022, told in Don Huffines and Bitcoin - invites exactly the expansions the dead designs drafted: a larger appropriation, a donation channel, local-government authority. And the grid-cost question that shadowed the session has since moved to the executive branch, chronicled in Greg Abbott and Bitcoin. Nothing in the dead file was voted down. In Texas, that is not an ending - it is a queue.