Montana lawmakers shot down a bill that would have enabled the state government to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) as a reserve asset.
Forty Republicans and one Democrat in Montana’s House of Representatives voted for the bill, but 41 Democrats and 18 Republicans rejected it.
[adinserter block="1"]The bill, which passed a committee vote last week, would have created “a state special revenue account for investment in precious metals and digital assets,” with digital assets defined as “virtual currencies, cryptocurrencies, native electronic assets, including stablecoins and non-fungible tokens, and other digital-only assets that confer economic, proprietary, or access rights or powers.”
The bill would have also limited the state to investing in crypto assets with a market cap of more than $750 billion averaged over the previous calendar – a criterion that only Bitcoin meets.
Montana isn’t the only state to mull crypto reserve legislation this year: Earlier this month, West Virginia Senator Chris Rose introduced a bill that would allow the state to invest up to 10% of public funds into the same types of assets. Legislators in Texas, Utah and Arizona are also considering similar proposals.
Bitcoin is trading at $92,029 at time of writing. The top-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down nearly 4% in the past 24 hours.
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