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Bo Hines, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets, signalled that Washington is seriously considering a public-private partnership with US miners to expand the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — without spending new federal dollars. Speaking with Marathon Digital Holdings chief executive Fred Thiel, Hines said that “a public-private partnership between the miners could be a phenomenal way to accumulate Bitcoin for the reserve” adding that the working group is “look[ing] forward to being part of that.
Created by Executive Order 14233 on 6 March 2025, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve directs the Treasury to amass BTC through budget-neutral means — principally by sweeping forfeited digital assets and deploying “creative solutions” to acquire more.
Hines said the inter-agency working group set up under that order is now examining mechanisms that would let industrial miners route a portion of fresh block rewards directly to Treasury custodial wallets, potentially in exchange for long-term power-purchase contracts or accelerated permitting. “We’ll work with Commerce, we’ll work with Treasury Secretary Bessent to find these creative solutions,” he told Thiel. “A public-private partnership between the miners could be a phenomenal way to accumulate Bitcoin for the reserve.”
Thiel, whose company operates one of the world’s largest fleets of ASIC rigs, noted that such a scheme would simultaneously increase US on-shore hash-rate and give the government a predictable pipeline of newly mined BTC. “One of the great opportunities — especially that solves two issues — helps the government accumulate Bitcoin and helps Bitcoin miners establish more hash rate in the US — is to partner with the US government,” he said. Hines agreed, replying, “Absolutely. We certainly look forward to being part of that.”
The conversation also centred on the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which cleared the Senate Banking Committee lately with rare bipartisan support and is queued for a floor vote. Hines called the bill “really monumental,” emphasising that instant-settling, dollar-backed stablecoins would modernise payments and “secure our global dominance for decades to come.”
He predicted that regulated stables could propel total digital-asset market capitalisation to “15-20 trillion dollars” and channel new liquidity into Bitcoin once market participants can “move in and out of different asset classes at will.”
Pressed by Thiel on how large the reserve should ultimately be, Hines dismissed the question as “silly,” reiterating that officials would pursue every legal avenue to expand holdings: “We want as much Bitcoin as we can possibly accumulate.”
Notably, the Executive Order laid down an aggressive schedule: by April 5, 2025 (30 days after signature) every federal agency was to file both a legal-authority review and a full on-chain accounting of whatever Bitcoin or other digital assets it held; by May 5, 2025 (60 days) the Treasury Secretary had to deliver a legal-and-investment evaluation for managing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.
None of the documents has been released. When asked about the silence, Bo Hines said last week that “there’s nothing in the order that mandates that the report becomes public,” but added the administration “could choose to make it public at some point.”
