Cynthia Lummis Re-Introduces the BITCOIN Act, a Proposal That Would See the U.S. Government Selling Gold to Acquire 1 Million BTC Worth $80 Billion

We've seen the establishment of a crypto reserve, the introduction of the GENIUS Act, and the overhauling of Biden-era crypto rules.

Cynthia Lummis, the Republican senator for Wyoming, is known for her rural background, her no-nonsense conservative views, and her passion for crypto, which she's been championing for over 3 years.

Lummis's rural Wyoming background is part of her appeal to Republican voters. She was born on a cattle ranch in Laramie county, and champions rural American and Wyoming causes. In the House of Representatives, she pushed through the first Interior and Environment Appropriations (EPA) bill in seven years. According to her website, Lummis “knows how to protect Wyoming values because she lives those values in her work and home life.”

In the Senate, Lummis regularly fights off environmental legislations for Wyoming’s mineral and energy resources. For example, she was a founding member of the bipartisan Congressional Clean Energy Coalition, and serves on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

But Lummis also has an interest in emerging technologies, which led her to co-sponsor the GENIUS Act. The bill would create a national strategic crypto reserve, diversifying federal assets to include digital currencies in addition to gold.

At the same time Lummis was co-sponsoring the GENIUS Act, she re-introduced the BITCOIN Act (Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide).

The most interesting part of the bill is that the $80 billion bitcoin acquisition wouldn’t involve any taxpayer money. According to the announcement, “The bill ensures no new taxpayer burden, utilizing Federal Reserve remittances, gold certificate revaluations, and other budget-neutral strategies to fund Bitcoin acquisitions. The U.S. Treasury will maintain all bitcoin holdings in secure cold storage, ensuring maximum security and long-term economic stability.”

Essentially, the act proposes a 20-year holding period in which funds in the Federal Reserve and the Treasury department are diversified to fund the purchase. For Lummis and crypto advocates, this represents a massive step towards debt relief. Given Bitcoin’s historical appreciation, an $80 billion reserve stands to grow significantly.

At the same time, however, Bitcoin’s volatility, and the fact that it has no underlying value, is concerning. Ultimately, it’s possible for bitcoin’s value to sky-rocket, but it could also drop to zero. It’s this aspect of the cryptocurrency that led Jamie Dimon to tell CNBC that Bitcoin is a “pet rock,” nothing more than a “worthless hyped-up fraud.”

The BITCOIN act would also look to increase government transparency related to reserve assets with a quarterly proof of reserve system. In this respect, it has seen support from advocates for greater reserve transparency, perhaps off the back of recent conversations surrounding the gold reserve at Fort Knox

But if the acquisition costs taxpayers nothing, and ostensibly has so much to gain, what’s the catch?

Bitcoin isn’t Quantum-Proof

The main concern associated with establishing such a reserve would be its security. It would require the U.S. to establish a “digital Fort Knox” to protect its newly acquired assets.

Even if this is possible, we don’t know how these threats will develop in the future. In particular, the government should be concerned about the potential threat that quantum computing would pose to this reserve. Bitcoin, after all, would be incredibly susceptible to hacking by a quantum computer, which could solve its cryptographic algorithms with ease.

While more recently established cryptocurrencies are attempting to forge resistance to these threats, Bitcoin is especially at risk. Quantum-proofing Bitcoin would involve fundamental changes, which would require every user’s wallet to be retrofitted and miners to update their hardware and software to support new consensus rules.

This would be a huge undertaking for the U.S. government, especially given the time constraints posed by the rising threat of quantum computing. Although quantum computing is still in its early stages of development, several countries are investing heavily in the technology. For example, the U.S. allocated $1.27 billion in 2023 for quantum computing research and development, while China is also investing massively in the field.

While quantum computing has always loomed as a potential threat against Bitcoin, it has never fully realized. But, if another country is faster to revolutionize quantum computing, the U.S. may find its eye-watering bitcoin reserve in significant danger.

While on the one hand the act could represent a massive step forward for both cryptocurrencies and America, there are also reasons to be concerned by such a large gamble.

Together they're rolling in the new era of MAGA: Burning Man edition. 🔥 #MAGA #Bitcoin #NewEra #NoSurrender pic.twitter.com/sW3uX8U53Z

Lummis is shaking this up following what many Americans believe to have been a stagnant era for America under Biden. But it hasn't been a straightforward journey, and she continues to divide opinion.

Despite her appeal as a born-