Utah House Passes Bitcoin Reserve Bill: What's Next?

Utah's House of Representatives on Thursday passed the Bitcoin reserve bill proposed by the state's Rep. Jordan Teuscher last month, marking a significant step forward in the state, potentially allocating a percentage of certain public funds to buy BTC and other cryptocurrencies.

Satoshi Action Fund (SAF) Founder and CEO Dennis Porter revealed Thursday that the bill has "officially passed the House in the state of Utah."

SAF is a Bitcoin advocacy nonprofit that has been helping push BTC bills forward by reaching out to lawmakers to educate them on the benefits of the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

What does the bill say?

Some people who've read the bill questioned how the proposed legislation is a "Bitcoin reserve" bill, considering BTC wasn't even mentioned. Instead, the bill used "digital assets" in its language.

Porter pointed out that Bitcoin is the only digital asset that actually qualifies for the bill's requirements. As per the bill, a "qualifying" asset that can be considered for allocation of up to 5% in certain public funds as a strategic reserve is "a digital asset with a market capitalization of over $500 billion averaged over the previous 12 months."

The bill did say a qualifying asset can also be a stablecoin, which means that if it passes the following stages, Utah may consider holding major stablecoins. However, it did not mention which specific stablecoins will be considered.

Still, no other cryptocurrency or digital asset has reached the market cap threshold within the bill, except Bitcoin. As of early Friday, BTC's market cap is at $1.9 trillion. The closest is Ethereum (ETH), with a $327 billion market capitalization.

What happens next?

With the bill passing the Utah House, it will now be handed over to the state's Senate, wherein it will need a majority vote before it is moved to the governor's office.

The governor can either sign the bill into law or veto it. While it is unclear whether Gov. Spencer Cox will sign the bill, it was under him in 2022 that the state passed three bills on crypto.

One of the bills passed into law required the Utah Division of Finance to establish contracts with third parties so it can accept payments in crypto, suggesting that Cox was pro-crypto, or at least pro-innovation.

With Utah moving fast to establish a potential BTC reserve, it could become the first state to have its own strategic Bitcoin reserve, even as it was Pennsylvania that became the first U.S. state to come out with proposed legislation on holding BTC as a strategic reserve.