Bitcoin Reserve Bill Stalls as Polymarket Odds Sink Below 10%

Time is the enemy here. The 119th Congress expires on January 3, 2027, leaving roughly 70 days from October 24 for H.R. 8957 to clear the House floor, survive the Senate and reach the president's desk. Polymarket traders have noticed: the "US national Bitcoin reserve before 2027" contract now sits between 4% and 9.5%, a long slide from the roughly 60% it touched in December 2025. Coinpedia's probability audit adds that the usable legislative calendar is far skinnier than those 70 calendar days suggest.

The bill didn't start out this tame. Reps. Nick Begich (R-AK) and Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced H.R. 8957 on May 21, 2026, authorizing Treasury to buy up to 200,000 BTC a year across five years, targeting 1 million BTC in total. Then came the rewrite. On September 16, the House Financial Services Committee passed the measure 28-21 along party lines under Chairman Bryan Steil's substitute amendment, and the purchase mandate disappeared.

What's left is a custody and lockup bill. With no open-market buying mandate, there's no fiscal score and no budget brawl, which smooths the path through the House but does far less for immediate demand. According to Coinpedia's analysis, swapping an active purchase mandate for a lockup study drained the short-term price momentum the original text had promised.

Meanwhile, the government keeps stacking, quietly. On-chain monitors watching US Government-labeled addresses, including funds seized from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, logged a 12,267 BTC transfer into internal Treasury-linked cold storage in October 2026. Executive Order 14233 stops those coins from being liquidated, but per Coinpedia, only statutory authorization like ARMA can legally turn them into a permanent national reserve fund.

So the watch list stays short: a House floor vote, a Senate companion push, and a signature. Miss January 3 and the bill dies with the 119th Congress, kicking the reserve question into the next session with the odds still underwater.