Congress advances two crypto bills in one day, but only one has actually passed committee
Washington moved on two separate pieces of crypto legislation on September 16, and it’s worth being precise about which one actually cleared a vote and which one is still mid-process.
The confirmed development: the House Ways and Means Committee passed the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357) by a 38-5 vote, sending it to the full House. The bill extends existing stock-market wash-sale rules to digital assets for the first time, closing a loophole that has let crypto holders sell at a loss, claim the tax deduction, and immediately buy back into the same position, something equity investors have never been able to do. It also folds in a handful of smaller provisions, including an exemption from capital gains reporting on network fees under $10.
Running in parallel, the House Financial Services Committee held its markup of H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA), the bill that would write Trump’s executive-order Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into federal law. As of writing, the official record of that committee’s vote outcome had not yet been published, so it should not be read as having “passed” until that’s confirmed. Hold your horses on that one!
What ARMA would actually do, if it clears committee and eventually becomes law, is narrower than the headlines suggest. It locks up the roughly 198,000 BTC the government already holds for a minimum of 20 years, bars sales, swaps or encumbrance of that Bitcoin during that period, and requires quarterly third-party audited proof-of-reserve reports. It does not authorize the government to buy more Bitcoin on the open market. It only directs Treasury and Commerce to study budget-neutral ways of acquiring more, meaning no new taxes, borrowing or deficit spending. A separate, unrelated bill proposing an actual federal buying program hasn’t had a hearing.
Even a clean committee pass wouldn’t make ARMA law. It would still need a full House floor vote, Senate passage and the President’s signature, and with the House due to leave Washington after September 17 until after the November election, a floor vote this month looks unlikely regardless of Wednesday’s outcome.
Why it matters: codifying the reserve in statute would make it far harder for a future administration to unwind by executive action, which is the real stakes of this bill, not a new Bitcoin-buying mandate.
What to watch next: confirmation of the actual House Financial Services Committee vote tally on H.R. 8957, whether the 20-year lockup and budget-neutral acquisition language survive intact or get amended, and whether the reserve provisions end up attached to the year-end NDAA as a faster legislative path, since there’s no Senate companion bill yet.
This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.