White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt mentioned the Trump administration will announce new particulars on the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve inside “the next few weeks,” framing the replace as each a coverage milestone and a custody response after an alleged exploit involving digital property held by the US Marshals Service.
Talking at Consensus 2026 in Miami on Wednesday, Witt mentioned the administration’s work on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, or SBR, and the separate digital asset stockpile had been progressing largely out of public view. The following announcement, he indicated, will deal with “exactly the progress that’s been made and where we’re going from here.”
Trump’s Bitcoin Reserve Heads Towards New Update
President Donald Trump signed an govt order in March 2025 establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a US Digital Asset Stockpile, with the bitcoin reserve capitalized by BTC lastly forfeited to the Treasury by way of felony or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. The non-bitcoin stockpile covers different forfeited digital property beneath a separate framework.
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Witt tied the approaching replace on to a current safety incident. “So, as many of the folks in this room may have seen, there was an exploit of certain assets that were held by the US Marshals just a month or two ago. We obviously started the work on the SBR, the digital asset stockpile, without thinking about that, but obviously thinking about we need to properly secure these assets. So it’s a case in point for why it was so necessary that the President established the SBR and that he instructed the agencies to take these assets very seriously and properly safeguard them.”
He added that digital asset custody creates challenges that don’t match neatly into legacy authorities asset-management procedures. “Custody is unique for digital assets. So we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress that’s kind of happened in the background and we’ll be making an announcement in the next few weeks, you know, laying out exactly the progress that’s been made and where we’re going from here.”
The exploit Witt referenced seems to be the alleged theft tied to John Daghita, additionally recognized on-line as “John” or “Lick.” The case grew to become public after blockchain investigator ZachXBT linked the “John/Lick” persona to wallets transferring funds linked to US government-controlled crypto addresses. TRM Labs later mentioned Daghita was arrested in Saint Martin in a joint operation involving the French Gendarmerie and the FBI, with authorities alleging he stole cryptocurrency from wallets related to the US Marshals Service.
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In accordance with TRM’s abstract, the investigation traced a part of the exercise to cryptocurrency seized in reference to the 2016 Bitfinex hack. TRM mentioned roughly $24.9 million of the traced funds originated from a US government-controlled pockets, whereas ZachXBT alleged that Daghita stole greater than $46 million in seized crypto property by abusing entry at CMDSS, his father’s firm, which held a US Marshals Service contract.
Notably, Witt had already previewed the replace days earlier at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. Talking on a panel at The Venetian Resort, he mentioned the administration had spent months working by way of the authorized interpretations wanted to guard bitcoin on the federal government steadiness sheet after Trump’s govt order. “In the next few weeks, we’ll be making a big announcement,” Witt mentioned there, including that the administration believed it might take a “big step forward from the executive branch side” even earlier than Congress acts.
He additionally made clear at Bitcoin 2026 that laws would nonetheless be wanted to lock the coverage in additional completely. That distinction is central: an executive-branch framework can form custody and administration now, however a statutory framework could be more durable for a future administration to unwind.
At press time, BTC traded at $81,530.
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