White House cryptocurrency adviser Patrick Witt said the Trump administration will release new details on the US strategic bitcoin reserve in the “next few weeks”, framing the update as both a policy milestone and a response to custody following the alleged exploitation of digital assets held by the US Marshals Service.
Speaking at Consensus 2026 in Miami on Wednesday, Witt he said the administration’s work on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, or SBR, and a separate digital asset stockpile has progressed largely out of public view. The next announcement, he indicated, will focus on “exactly the progress that has been made and where we are going from here.”
Trump’s Bitcoin Reserve is headed for a new update
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and US Digital Asset Stockpile, with the BTC-capitalized bitcoin reserve ultimately forfeited to the Treasury Department through criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Non-Bitcoin inventory covers other seized digital assets under a separate framework.
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Witt linked the upcoming update directly to the recent security incident. “So, as many people in this room may have seen, there was an exploitation of certain assets that were held by the US Marshals just a month or two ago. We obviously started working on the SBR, the stockpile of digital assets, not thinking about it, but obviously thinking that we needed to properly secure those assets. So that’s an example of why it was so necessary for the president to establish the SBR and for him to direct the agencies to take these assets very seriously and protect them properly.”
He added that custody of digital assets creates challenges that do not fit into legacy government asset management procedures. “Custody is unique to digital assets. So we’ve made tremendous progress that’s kind of happened behind the scenes and we’ll be announcing in the next couple of weeks, you know, exactly how much progress has been made and where we’re going from there.”
The exploit Witt mentions appears to be an alleged theft associated with John Daghit, also known online as “John” or “Lick.” The case became public after blockchain investigator ZachXBT linked the persona “John/Lick” to wallets that move funds linked to crypto addresses controlled by the US government. TRM Labs later said Daghita was arrested in Saint Martin in a joint operation involving the French Gendarmerie and the FBI, and authorities allege he stole cryptocurrency from wallets linked to the US Marshals Service.
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According to TRM’s summary, the investigation traced some of the activity to cryptocurrency seized in connection with the Bitfinex hack in 2016. TRM said approximately $24.9 million of the tracked funds came from wallets controlled by the US government, while ZachXBT claimed Daghita stole more than $46 million of the seized crypto assets by abusing access to CMDSS, his father’s company, which had a contract with the US Marshals Service.
In fact, Witt already previewed the update at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas days earlier. Speaking on a panel at The Venetian Resort, he said the administration has spent months working on the legal interpretations needed to protect bitcoin on the government’s balance sheet following Trump’s executive order. “We’re going to make a big announcement in the next few weeks,” Witt said, adding that the administration believes it could take “a big step forward from the executive branch” even before Congress acts.
At Bitcoin 2026, he also made it clear that legislation would still be needed to lock in the policy more permanently. This distinction is crucial: the executive framework can shape stewardship and governance now, but it would be more difficult for a future administration to dissolve the legal framework.
At press time, BTC was trading at $81,530.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
