West Virginia proposal lets state treasury put 10% into crypto, gold

Senator Chris Rose has proposed changes to West Virginia’s legal code that would authorize investments of up to 10% of its holdings in precious metals and select digital assets. 

Rose introduced a bill, the Inflation Protection Act, that would permit the West Virginia Board of Treasury to invest in precious metals, qualifying digital assets valued at more than $750 billion last year, and stablecoins. If it becomes law, it would open the door for the state treasury to invest in Bitcoin, the only digital asset that cleared the market-cap bar as of January.

West Virginia bill signals government acceptance of Bitcoin and stablecoins

The Inflation Protection Act allows any Treasury digital asset investment to be held with a qualified custodian, in an exchange-traded product, or through a secure custody framework. All stablecoin investments would also be restricted to tokens that U.S. or state government regulators acknowledge as eligible. The bill would be a defensive stance to curb inflation, according to supporters so far, rather than a major reorientation of fiscal policy.

Just like West Virginia, similar ideas have been floated in several U.S. states for governments to invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but only Texas, Arizona, and New Hampshire have enacted such laws.

The West Virginia proposal’s prospects remain uncertain as it proceeds to the legislature’s Banking and Insurance Committee, where lawmakers will vet risk controls, market volatility, and fiduciary duties. The proposal implies to markets that governments now recognize alternative assets more often, typically after large price increases.

The bill also bolsters the picture of Bitcoin as a hedge against macroeconomic risks and a reserve-style holding asset rather than a speculative play. With all that said, the recent strong gains in Bitcoin suggest that modest government interest may not be enough to drive significant upside and instead reflect wider mainstream adoption. For gold and silver, it alludes to the metals’ conventional role as inflation hedges — though, as with cryptocurrencies, official-sector attention generally gravitates to long-term price gains.

Lawmakers just pushed back the markup of the CLARITY Act

West Virginia lawmakers introduced the proposal after the U.S. Senate postponed a scheduled review of legislation to establish a framework for digital asset markets. Industry actors have already expressed reservations about the CLARITY Act for DeFi, stablecoin incentives, and regulatory authority over digital assets. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong shared his view on the proposed Senate legislation on crypto market structure, less than a day after opposing its current draft. Before, he had written on X that Coinbase was retracting its support for the CLARITY Act, and the markup was later postponed.

He noted, “We developed this concern that if [the bill] went into a markup, the only way to edit some of that base text would have been through an amendment, and amendments had already been submitted.”

The executive added, “And so we didn’t think it was prudent to come out of committee with a bunch of these issues in the bill, which would have been catastrophic for the average American consumer. I think we’ve got a chance to do a new draft, and hopefully get into a markup in a few weeks.”

Still, key representatives in the tokenization sector see a different picture than Coinbase’s. “The current draft does not kill tokenized equities,” Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, said. It simply clarifies, he argued, that they’re still securities and must follow existing rules, a key step toward integrating blockchain into traditional markets.

According to Domingo, the push-and-pull around the bill is a “typical and healthy” part of the legislative process. Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate initially anticipated that the CLARITY Act would become legislation by 2026

Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.