The Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

What is the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?

It 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][3] Its defining trait is structural: the reserve sits outside the state treasury, managed by the Texas Comptroller as a dedicated vehicle rather than a line item in an existing fund, and shielded from the routine sweeps that pull idle balances back into general revenue.^[2] Texas did not merely permit the state to own Bitcoin — it built a strategic reserve and named it one. The fuller legislative arc, from the 2014 “not money” memo forward, lives on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline.

How much Bitcoin does Texas actually own?

As of its first move, Texas holds Bitcoin exposure, not yet self-custodied coin. On November 20, 2025, the Comptroller's office bought roughly $5 million of the iShares Bitcoin Trust — a spot Bitcoin ETF — at $51.8694 a share, with Bitcoin near $91,300, and described the position as a temporary placeholder.^[4] By the time the custody RFP was filed in May 2026, the position had grown to the full $10 million appropriation, all of it in IBIT – a second purchase of about $5 million on December 15, 2025 completed it, and by March 2, 2026 the position was marked at roughly $7.8 million.^[8][9][13] The state deliberately started with an ETF to establish a position while it built the plumbing to hold the asset itself. That plumbing is the custody question below — and it is the difference between owning a claim on Bitcoin and owning the keys.

How is the reserve funded?

The Legislature appropriated $10 million to seed the reserve. The number is its own small piece of Capitol history: a Senate budget rider had floated $21 million to “kick start” the fund before the final figure settled at $10 million.^[7] A donation channel written into the early drafts was removed in conference.^[12] Beyond that appropriation, SB 21 lets the reserve grow three more ways — open-market purchases by the state, and any forks or airdrops that land in the state's cryptocurrency addresses.^[2] It is a fund designed to accumulate, not just to hold a one-time allocation.

With the donation door closed, the reserve is not a channel for private money — Texans cannot buy into it. For the routes that are open to individuals, from public miners with Texas operations to the new Texas Stock Exchange, see how to invest in the Texas Bitcoin economy.

What can the reserve hold?

Only a digital asset averaging at least $500 billion in market capitalization over the most recent 24 months is eligible.^[2] The threshold is the policy in miniature: it is high enough that, today, only Bitcoin clears it, so the “reserve” is Bitcoin in all but the statute's careful, asset-neutral wording. The 24-month averaging window is deliberate too — it screens out anything that spikes to a half-trillion for a week, demanding durability, not a moment – ether, at roughly $494 billion in October 2025, has crossed the line only briefly.^[11] It is the same hard-money instinct that runs through what Texas law says about Bitcoin.

Who runs it, and who is on the advisory committee?

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts manages the reserve, and must publish biennial reports on its value and administration.^[2] The office's own record with the asset – the bullion depository before it, the tax rulings beside it – is on the Texas Comptroller and Bitcoin. A five-member advisory committee guides that work, and it is complete: on May 28, 2026, then-Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock — the comptroller sits on the committee by office — named the four outside seats: Laurie Dotter, Cormint CEO Jamie McAvity, SMU law professor Carla Reyes, and CleanSpark CFO Gary Vecchiarelli — a bench that pairs institutional investment experience with people who mine and account for Bitcoin for a living.^[5] The same announcement opened the request for proposals for the custody-and-liquidity partner.^[5] The office itself changed hands on August 1, 2026, when Don Huffines was sworn in after Hancock's resignation; custody of the reserve, the committee seat, and the pending custody award passed with it.^[10] The honest counterweight runs through the executor: as a senator, Hancock voted against SB 21 — one of the five nays when the Senate passed it 25 to 5 on March 6, 2025 — a day before the vacancy opened that would make him the acting comptroller who built out the reserve's advisory committee and bought its first position, the custodian of a statute he had opposed.^[17]

How does Texas compare to other states?

Texas is not alone in law — Arizona and New Hampshire also enacted cryptocurrency-reserve statutes — but it is first in structure.^{[4][14][15][14][15]} Where others authorized crypto exposure inside existing funds, Texas stood up a standalone, publicly funded reserve held outside the treasury, with its own committee, its own reporting cadence, and its own line in the Comptroller's manual of accounts.^[6] The design is the statement: a reserve is something a state builds on purpose and reports on, not a position it happens to carry. Why that structure reads as a deliberate strategic move — a credible commitment and a focal threshold other states are copying — is the subject of the game theory of the Texas Bitcoin reserve.

What comes next for the reserve?

The near-term story is custody — and it is at the wire. The RFP for a custody-and-liquidity firm closed July 10, 2026 (extended from June 15), with contract execution targeted for late August 2026; the selected partner will retire the $10 million ETF placeholder for Bitcoin held directly in the name of the State of Texas — the move from a claim to the keys.^[8][9] That handoff now has its own living record: who holds the Texas Bitcoin reserve tracks the custodian search, the 60-day conversion clock, and the coming public holdings website. After that come the questions both pages keep tracking: what the first biennial report shows, and whether the 90th Legislature, convening January 2027, adds to the fund. None of these are threats to the record above — they are its next entries, and we update against the primary record as they land.

What must the first biennial report contain?

Four things, by statute. Section 403.708 of the Government Code, added by SB 21, requires the Comptroller — not later than December 31 of each even-numbered year — to publish on the office's website and submit to the Legislature a report stating: the amount of Bitcoin held in the reserve on the last day of the preceding state fiscal biennium; an estimate of its monetary value on that day; the changes in amount and value over the period the assets have been held, disaggregated by cryptocurrency type; and a description of the actions the Comptroller took to administer and manage the reserve.^[16] The first report in the statute's life is due by December 31, 2026, under Comptroller Don Huffines whatever the November 3 election decides, and six weeks before the 90th Legislature convenes.^[10][16]

The honest reading of the text has a wrinkle. Texas's fiscal biennium runs September 1 of an odd year through August 31 two years later, so the “preceding state fiscal biennium” for a December 2026 report ended on August 31, 2025 — twelve weeks before the first purchase on November 20, 2025.^[4][16] Read literally, the snapshot clause reports a reserve that held nothing on its measuring date; it is the third clause — changes over the period held, by asset — and the fourth — actions taken — that would carry the two purchases, the ETF placeholder, the advisory committee, and the custody procurement. Whether the Comptroller reports against the literal date or the date of publication is the first thing this page checks when the report posts. We will read it against the primary record and update the status panel above the same day.