Five years after making bitcoin legal tender, El Salvador still holds 7,677 BTC worth approximately $480 million, according to a Bitcoin Magazine report. The Central American nation's Congress passed the world's first Bitcoin Law on June 8, 2021, with a 62-to-22 vote, and the government has continued accumulating the cryptocurrency since.
In the United States, a parallel development emerged as the full text of H.R. 8957 — the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 — became public. The bill, reported by The Defiant, imposes a mandatory 20-year prohibition on selling any acquired bitcoin and requires quarterly, publicly audited proof-of-reserve reports. This legislative proposal signals a potential shift in US federal crypto policy, contrasting sharply with previous regulatory uncertainty.
The bitcoin price has responded to these sovereign adoption signals, though specific price data was not provided in the source articles. The market cap of bitcoin relative to the broader crypto sector continues to dominate, with gold's status as a reserve asset providing a comparative framework. Bitcoin's correlation with traditional markets remains a point of volatility concern, but institutional and sovereign interest appears to be growing.
Regulatory implications are significant: El Salvador's experiment has faced IMF criticism and market skepticism, yet the country persists. The US bill, if passed, would represent the most concrete federal bitcoin reserve policy ever proposed, potentially reshaping global reserve asset discussions. Legal precedents from El Salvador's adoption could influence US legislative arguments, while the CFTC and SEC continue to debate crypto oversight.
Skeptics argue that sovereign bitcoin reserves remain an unproven and highly volatile experiment. El Salvador's holdings have fluctuated dramatically with bitcoin's price swings, and the 20-year lockup proposed in the US bill removes the flexibility typically associated with reserve management. Both approaches carry significant risk: one from price volatility, the other from policy rigidity.