U.S. Senator Lummis Proposes the U.S. Buy 1M Bitcoin to Reduce National Debt

The Wyoming senator brought a copy of her legislation to the stage at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) is set to introduce legislation that will establish a "strategic bitcoin reserve" to reduce the national debt of the United States, CoinDesk has learned. The bill, which is still being drafted, will call for the U.S. government to buy 1 million bitcoin (BTC) over the course of five years.

The bitcoin will be held for at least 20 years, Lummis told CoinDesk in an interview at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday. The senator, who is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said that the goal of the legislation is to "put bitcoin on the table" as a solution to the country's economic problems.

"We're going to have a bill that will reduce the national debt of the United States of America. And how are we going to do that? We're going to put bitcoin on the table. This is the solution. This is the answer. This is our Louisiana purchase moment,” Lummis said on stage after former President Donald Trump spoke and endorsed the idea of a bitcoin reserve.

At current prices, 1 million bitcoin are worth about $68 billion. The U.S. national debt, on the other hand, currently stands at over $31 trillion. Lummis acknowledged the disparity in an interview with CoinDesk, but said that the goal of her legislation is to get people thinking about bitcoin as a solution to the country's economic problems.

"We're not going to solve the national debt with bitcoin. But what we're going to do is put bitcoin on the table as a solution. And then we're going to start talking about how we can use bitcoin to solve other problems in our economy,” she said.

Lummis said that she expects the bill to be introduced in the next few weeks. It's unclear how much support the legislation will garner in Congress, especially among Democrats. However, Lummis said that she's already had conversations with several members of both parties who are interested in the bill.

"I've talked to a number of senators on both sides of the aisle who are very interested in this bill. And I think that we're going to have a good chance of getting it passed,” she said.

If the bill is passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden, it will mark a significant development in the relationship between the United States government and bitcoin. To date, the U.S. government has not officially recognized bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. However, several agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), have jurisdiction over different aspects of the crypto industry.

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