Texas Bill Would Let Cities and Counties Invest Up to $10M Each in Bitcoin

The timeline is contingent on passage. If enacted, the authority takes effect September 1, 2027, the earliest date any Texas city or county could legally begin buying.

Links to the State Bitcoin Reserve

HB 815 borrows its definitions from Section 403.701 of the Government Code, created by Senate Bill 21 in 2025, which established the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Bitcoin is defined as a decentralized cryptocurrency operating independently of a central authority, and cryptocurrency more broadly as a cryptographically secured virtual currency recorded on a distributed ledger.

The bill imports those definitions selectively. Under the state reserve law, an asset must have averaged at least $500 billion in market capitalization over the prior 24 months, and the comptroller must use a qualified custodian and commission independent audits. HB 815 carries over none of these conditions. Crypto Briefing and crypto.news both report that the bill sets no replacement market-cap floor, approved-token list, custody requirements, audit provisions or loss-handling rules, leaving those choices to each local government.

The state itself has taken a different route. Crypto Briefing reports the Texas Comptroller holds roughly $10 million of Bitcoin exposure through the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust as part of the reserve. Crypto.news reports the state bought $5 million of BlackRock ETF shares in November 2025 as an interim allocation within that $10 million initiative, with later figures reported as of May 29, 2026. The two accounts agree on the ETF structure; the size and timing details should be confirmed against the comptroller's own disclosures.

Legislative Precedent

This is not the first attempt. Reynolds introduced HB 4258 in March 2025, which would have let the comptroller invest up to $250 million from the Economic Stabilization Fund in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. It included a similar $10 million local allowance and a September 1, 2025 effective date, but it did not pass. HB 815 drops the state-fund provision and keeps the local cap.

Open Questions and Milestones

For city and county finance officers, the bill would add a new option without supplying the custody, loss or eligibility framework that the state reserve law contains. Crypto Briefing notes this could produce uneven safeguards and protection for taxpayers across counties.

Three milestones matter next: committee assignment after the session opens in January 2027, whether amendments restore custody and market-cap provisions from SB 21, and whether the bill reaches a floor vote before the September 2027 effective date.

Why It Matters

For Traders

Passage is more than a year away, and the bill has no committee referral yet, so no near-term order flow is implied by the filing alone.

For Investors

If enacted, public-sector demand from Texas localities would add a new institutional channel for Bitcoin, though the $10 million per-government cap limits its scale.

For Builders

Custody and eligibility rules are left blank, so any local government adopting the authority would need compliant custody and audit tooling built or procured from scratch.