Former White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said President Donald Trump remains interested in buying bitcoin for the U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve, but direct purchases on the open market face serious legal obstacles. ChainCatcher reported the remarks on November 11, 2026, at 5:38 p.m. UTC+8, citing Bitcoin.com News and Witt’s appearance on the What Bitcoin Did podcast.
A March 2025 executive order established the reserve using bitcoin already seized by the government. It also directed the Treasury and Commerce departments to seek “budget-neutral” ways to acquire more. No such strategy had been made public, and no open-market purchase had been announced at the time of the report.
Witt said direct purchases are legally questionable because Congress controls federal spending. He also said concerns about purchases led Congress to include a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act barring them, and that he is working to secure permission and authorization.
The gap between the ambition and the evidence is clear: Witt described presidential interest, not an authorized or completed purchase. He said making the reserve permanent would be harder still: a standalone bill would be extremely difficult to pass in a divided Congress, while a reserve based only on an executive order could be reversed by a future president.