Bitcoin Flat as Congress Pushes Crypto Reserve and Tax Bills Forward

Two crypto bills moved through Congress on September 16, but only one has actually cleared a committee vote so far.

On that day, Washington advanced a pair of crypto-related measures, and it's important to distinguish which one secured a formal vote and which remains a work in progress.

What's confirmed: the House Ways and Means Committee approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357) with a 38-5 tally, moving it to the full House. For the first time, the bill extends existing wash-sale rules—which apply to stock trades—to digital assets, shutting down a loophole that has allowed crypto holders to sell at a loss, claim a tax deduction, and then repurchase the same asset right away, something equity investors have never been able to do. The measure also includes several smaller items, such as exempting network fees under $10 from capital gains reporting.

In a separate track, the House Financial Services Committee held a markup session for H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA), which would turn Trump's executive order on a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into federal statute. As of this writing, the committee's official vote result had not been released yet, so it shouldn't be treated as having "passed" until that is verified. Patience is needed on that front!

What ARMA would actually do, assuming it clears committee and eventually becomes law, is more limited than the headlines imply. It would lock up the government's existing holdings of roughly 198,000 BTC for at least 20 years, prohibit selling, swapping, or using that Bitcoin as collateral during that span, and mandate quarterly third-party audited proof-of-reserve reports. The bill does not authorize the government to buy more Bitcoin on the open market. It only instructs the Treasury and Commerce departments to study budget-neutral ways to acquire additional Bitcoin—meaning no new taxes, borrowing, or deficit spending. A separate, unrelated bill that would create an actual federal buying program has not received a hearing.

Even a clean committee vote wouldn't make ARMA law. It would still require a full House floor vote, Senate passage, and the President's signature, and given that the House is scheduled to leave Washington after September 17 until after the November election, a floor vote this month seems unlikely regardless of what happens on Wednesday.

Why this matters: putting the reserve into statute would make it much harder for a future administration to undo it through executive action, which is the real significance here—not a new mandate to buy Bitcoin.

What to watch next: confirmation of the House Financial Services Committee's actual vote count on H.R. 8957, whether the 20-year lockup and the budget-neutral acquisition language survive intact or get changed, and whether the reserve provisions get attached to the year-end NDAA as a faster legislative route, given that no companion Senate bill exists yet.