The Texas Bitcoin Law Timeline

Is Bitcoin legal in Texas?

Yes — Bitcoin is legal to buy, sell, hold, and mine in Texas, and it always has been. The full legal-status reference — licensing, custody, legal tender, taxes, and the federal seam in one place — is what Texas law actually says about Bitcoin. The clearest statement is the oldest document on this timeline: Supervisory Memorandum 1037, issued by the Texas Department of Banking on April 3, 2014, which holds that cryptocurrency is not “money” under the Texas Money Services Act because it is not government-issued legal tender.^[10] Banking Commissioner Charles G. Cooper framed it at the time as “best viewed like a speculative investment, not as money.”^[11] The practical consequence: selling your own bitcoin, or exchanging crypto for crypto, does not by itself trigger a state money-transmission license — the license attaches only when sovereign currency moves in a transmitting capacity.^[13] Federal law is a separate map — a business converting cash to bitcoin for customers must still register with FinCEN — a seam explored in depth in the history of Bitcoin in Texas, our cornerstone account of how the 2014 memo set everything else in motion. To watch that federal map get enforced in practice, see the Texas Bitcoin case tracker — every § 1960 and crypto prosecution announced in Texas's four federal districts, rebuilt nightly from the DOJ record.

How did Texas law make room for Bitcoin?

Texas made room for Bitcoin in one remarkable June: three moves in eight days of 2021. On June 7, Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1576, creating the 16-member Work Group on Blockchain Matters to draft a master plan for the industry.^[4] On June 10, the Department of Banking issued Industry Notice 2021-03, confirming that state-chartered banks may custody virtual currency under existing authority in Texas Finance Code § 32.001.^[12][16] And on June 15, Abbott signed House Bill 4474, which wrote virtual currency into the Texas Uniform Commercial Code — defining the asset, establishing what “control” of it means, and giving lenders and purchasers commercial-law certainty no handshake could.^[3][17] The timing was not a coincidence: China banned Bitcoin mining that same spring, and Texas was writing the welcome mat into statute just as the world's hashrate went looking for a home — the migration mapped site by site on the Texas Bitcoin mining map.

What did the 2023 session change?

The 88th Legislature in 2023 built the consumer-protection and energy layers. Senate Bill 895, signed May 29, 2023, replaced the state's aging money-transmission statute with the multistate Money Services Modernization Act framework, effective September 1, 2023.^[6][18] House Bill 591, signed June 2, 2023, exempted otherwise-flared natural gas from severance tax when consumed near the wellhead — a tailored invitation to the Permian Basin's off-grid miners.^[7][19] And House Bill 1666, signed June 9, 2023, made Texas an early proof-of-reserves state: digital asset providers must segregate customer funds and file auditor-attested reserve reports with the Department of Banking.^[8][20] Written months after FTX's collapse, HB 1666 is the Texas posture in one law — pro-Bitcoin and anti-trust-me, demanding the receipts that self-custody never needed.

What Bitcoin bills failed in Texas?

The most consequential failure — and the honest counterweight on this timeline — is Senate Bill 1751. Authored by Senator Lois Kolkhorst in 2023, it would have capped Bitcoin miners' participation in ERCOT demand-response programs — which pay large loads to power down when the grid is stressed — at 10%, and stripped miners' tax abatements. It was no fringe effort: SB 1751 passed the Texas Senate 30–1 on April 12, 2023.^[14] A lopsided Senate vote against the industry's interests is part of the record, and it stays on the spine. The bill then stalled in a Texas House committee in May 2023 and died without a floor vote.^[5][15] The episode marks the real boundary of Texas friendliness: the state embraces miners as flexible grid assets, but a majority of its senators were willing to cap the subsidy — and only the House kept the cap from becoming law. The 89th session's full roster of failures — the right-to-transact amendment, the kiosk stalemate, the reserve designs not chosen — is kept in the dead file: Texas Bitcoin bills that didn't become law.

What is the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?

The Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a state-owned Bitcoin fund created by Senate Bill 21, authored by Senator Charles Schwertner and signed by Governor Greg Abbott on June 20, 2025, effective immediately.^[1][21] It made Texas the first state to establish a standalone, publicly funded Bitcoin reserve — held outside the state treasury, managed by the Texas Comptroller, and restricted to digital assets averaging at least $500 billion in market capitalization over the trailing 24 months, a threshold only Bitcoin clears.^[21][22] The structure is the message: Texas did not add Bitcoin to a pension allocation or an ETF line item; it built a dedicated vehicle, shielded from routine fund sweeps, and named it strategic. Eleven years separate the reserve from Supervisory Memorandum 1037 — Texas spent them moving from “Bitcoin is not money” to Bitcoin as a reserve asset of the state itself.

And the reserve is no longer only on paper. On November 20, 2025, the Comptroller's office made its first purchase — roughly $5 million in shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust, bought at $51.8694 a share with Bitcoin near $91,300 — and called the ETF position a temporary placeholder until a dedicated custodian is in place.^[23] In May 2026, Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock named the reserve's advisory committee — including Cormint's Jamie McAvity, SMU law professor Carla Reyes, and CleanSpark CFO Gary Vecchiarelli — and opened a request for proposals for the custody and liquidity partner that will carry the state from an ETF proxy into directly held Bitcoin.^[24] On August 1, 2026, Don Huffines was sworn in as Comptroller after Hancock's resignation, inheriting the reserve with its custodian still unnamed.^[25] The statute has become a standing order at the trading desk — funding, custody, the committee, and the reserve's current status are tracked in full on the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve page.

Does Texas have its own digital currency?

Not a central bank digital currency — Texas chose older collateral. House Bill 1056, carried in the Senate by Senator Bryan Hughes and signed June 22, 2025, recognizes gold and silver specie as legal tender in Texas and directs the Comptroller to stand up a transactional currency fully backed by metal in the Texas Bullion Depository.^[2][9] The rollout is deliberate: the act takes effect May 1, 2027, with its Section 2116.101 arriving September 1, 2026.^[2] Set beside SB 21, the pattern is unmistakable — in the same June, Texas wrote both of hard money's traditions into law: the digital-native kind secured by proof-of-work, and the ancient kind secured by bullion in a vault. Bitcoin is not legal tender in Texas; it holds the arguably stronger position of reserve asset.

What comes next for Bitcoin law in Texas?

The pattern on this spine points forward. Every regular session since 2021 has moved Bitcoin law further than the one before — recognition in 2021, protection in 2023, reserve in 2025 — and the 90th Legislature convenes in January 2027 with live questions queued: how quickly the reserve accumulates now that its first position is on the books, how the Bullion Depository's transactional currency launches by its May 2027 deadline, and how a grid absorbing AI data centers treats its original flexible load. The frontier framing matters here: none of these are threats to the record above — they are its next entries. We re-verify this timeline after every session, the same cadence as the Texas Bitcoin mining map and the history of Bitcoin in Texas. Dataset last verified September 1, 2026, covering 13 milestones across twelve years of Texas law.