Texas Bitcoin bill passes and will likely be signed by Gov. Abbott, says advocate

Texas should soon become the third state to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, according to Texas Blockchain Council's founder and President Lee Bratcher.

On Tuesday, Bratcher told The Block that if the bill cleared the state legislature, he believes Gov. Greg Abbott will sign the bill into law. Then on Wednesday, Texas lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pass Senate Bill 21, which allows for establishing a Bitcoin reserve.

While careful to express exactly how confident he is about what Gov. Abbott will ultimately decide, Bratcher said he and his team expect the governor to sign the bill.

"I've talked to the governor about this personally, and I think he wants to see Texas lead in this way," Bratcher told The Block. "But I certainly won't put words in his mouth. He's going to make that determination at the appropriate time."

If Abbott does sign the Bitcoin bill, which Bratcher expects to be on the governor's desk within a "week or two," that would almost certainly make Texas the third state to do so, following the lead of New Hampshire and Arizona . In March, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve."

'Modest amount' of Bitcoin

When asked to estimate how much Texas — which on its own ranks as one of the largest economies in the world, ahead of most nations — might invest in Bitcoin, Bratcher predicted that initially the state will play it safe.

"My sense is that it will be in the tens of millions of dollars, which, while it sounds significant, is a very modest amount, for a state the size of Texas," he said. "It's still early and the comptroller is going to utilize proven investing standards to determine how much to buy, when to purchase, and that's really outside of the hands of anybody except the professionals at the comptroller's office."

State comptrollers essentially function as an executive accountant who looks after how public funds are spent and invested.

According to Bratcher, his Texas Blockchain Council has been hoping, for years, the state would create a Bitcoin reserve. Bratcher also said the "concept" of forming a Texas Bitcoin reserve dates back to 2022, and since then, he has been working alongside like-minded lawmakers who also wanted to see the state accumulate the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Texas has long been a haven for the crypto-friendly and home to many Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of about $109,400 on Wednesday morning.