White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said the Trump administration will announce up-to-date details about the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the “next few weeks,” viewing the update as both a policy milestone and an answer to a question about the alleged exploit of digital assets held by the U.S. Marshals Service.
On Wednesday, Witt spoke at Consensus 2026 in Miami he said the administration’s work on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, or SBR, and a separate digital asset repository took place largely out of public view. He indicated that the next statement would focus on “exact progress we’ve made and where we’re going.”
Trump’s Bitcoin Reserve Is Heading for a New Update
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve and a U.S. digital asset warehouse, with the bitcoin reserve capitalized by BTC ultimately being forfeited to the treasury through criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Non-Bitcoin stocks include other lost digital assets under a separate framework.
Witt linked the upcoming update directly to a recent security incident. “So, as many people in this room may have noticed, there was the use of certain assets that were in the possession of the U.S. Marshals just a month or two ago. Of course, we started working on the SBR, the digital asset stockpile, without thinking about it, but obviously thinking about the fact that we need to properly secure these assets. So this is evidence of why it was so necessary for the president to establish an SBR and direct the agencies to take these assets very seriously and protect them appropriately.”
He added that storing digital assets poses challenges that do not fit existing government asset management procedures. “Curation is unique to digital assets. So we’ve made a lot of progress that’s kind of happened in the background, and we’ll be making an announcement in the next few weeks detailing exactly the progress we’ve made and where we’re going.”
The exploit Witt mentioned appears to be an alleged theft linked to John Daghita, also known online as “John” or “Lick.” The case became public after blockchain researcher ZachXBT linked an individual “John/Lick” to wallets carrying 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, with authorities saying he stole cryptocurrency from wallets associated with the U.S. Marshals Service.
According to a TRM summary, the investigation traced some cryptocurrency business seized in connection with the Bitfinex hack in 2016. TRM found that approximately $24.9 million of traced funds came from a U.S. government-controlled wallet, while ZachXBT alleged that Daghita stole over $46 million in seized crypto assets by abusing access to CMDSS, his father’s company that had a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service.
It is worth noting that Witt had already previewed the update a few days earlier at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. Speaking on a panel at The Venetian Resort, he said the administration spent months working on the legal interpretations necessary to protect bitcoin on the government’s balance sheet after Trump’s executive order. “We will be making an important announcement in the next few weeks,” Witt said there, adding that the administration believes it can make “a big step forward on the executive branch” before Congress takes action.
He also explained at Bitcoin 2026 that regulations would still be needed to permanently block this policy. This distinction is key: an executive framework can already shape care and management, but a statutory framework would be more complex for a future administration.
At the time of publication, the price of BTC was $81,530.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
