Utah Senate strikes BTC reserve clause from blockchain bill

After Senate approval, the document is sent to the state governor for signature

10.03.2025 - 14:25

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What’s new? The Utah Senate has passed the HB230 “Blockchain and Digital Innovation Amendments” bill, providing state residents with rights to non-custodial storage of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin mining, running blockchain nodes, and participating in staking. At the same time, a clause creating a bitcoin reserve was removed from the bill.

Voting results

What else is known? After approval by the Senate, the document is sent to Utah Governor Spencer Cox for signature, after which it will become law.

The crypto reserve clause would authorize Utah’s treasurer to invest up to 5% of the state’s funds in digital assets with a market capitalization of at least $500 billion in the last calendar year. Currently, only bitcoin meets this criterion.

This clause as part of the bill successfully passed the second reading but was canceled in the third final reading.

Earlier, the lobbying organization Satoshi Action Fund expected Utah to become the first state with its own bitcoin reserve. Now the states closest to passing similar bills are Arizona and Texas. In both states, the documents have been approved by the local Senate’s relevant committees and are now awaiting a final vote by the full legislature.

A total of 31 state-level crypto reserve bills have been introduced across the country, of which 25 remain pending, including bills in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma. In Pennsylvania, Montana, Kentucky, and North Dakota, the bills failed to garner the necessary support.

Meanwhile, on March 7, Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a federal strategic bitcoin reserve from coins obtained as a result of forfeitures in criminal cases. In turn, the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce were tasked with developing budget-neutral strategies for buying more BTC.

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