Greg Guenthner:

House Committee Advances U.S. Bitcoin Reserve Bill on Party-Line Split

A House committee has advanced a bill that would write President Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law, reporting the American Reserve Modernization Act, H.R. 8957, favorably on Wednesday by 28 votes to 21.

All 28 votes to report the bill came from Republicans and all 21 against from Democrats. An amendment from ranking member Maxine Waters (D-CA) failed on the same 21-28 line.

The bill would give the Treasury 180 days to stand up a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile, and requires every federal agency to account for its holdings within 60 days. Committee chairman French Hill (R-AR) called it "a common-sense measure that brings digital assets held across federal agencies under Treasury custody and consistent oversight." Once deposited, no Bitcoin could be "sold, swapped, auctioned, encumbered, or otherwise disposed of for any purpose" for 20 years.

The bill still authorizes no purchases, ordering Treasury and Commerce to study within 180 days whether buying more could be done without cost to taxpayers. Nothing in that section permits "any borrowing or other financing, including the pledging, encumbering, or use of any digital asset or other asset of the United States as collateral." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has separately ruled out agency purchases.

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Chris Campbell:

SEC Grants Temporary Exemption for Tokenized U.S. Stock Trading

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a temporary exemption allowing limited trading of tokenized U.S. stocks on certain onchain venues.

Under the innovation exemption approved Thursday, Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) can offer permissioned trading of tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks.

The exemption covers trading through automated market makers and liquidity pools, subject to requirements including transaction transparency, recordkeeping and technology safeguards, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said. TSVs must also regularly publish U.S. dollar-denominated transaction data, including prices, trade sizes, timestamps, pool addresses, end-of-day pool sizes and daily volumes.

"The Innovation Exemption is designed to be controlled," Uyeda said, adding that symbol and volume limits will apply. He said the framework would give the SEC data to assess onchain securities trading and inform future rules.

The SEC is seeking public feedback on the framework, including data, case studies and information from live or test environments.

The SEC had been developing the innovation exemption for months. In February, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the regulator was considering a temporary framework that would allow limited trading of tokenized securities through automated market makers while it developed longer-term rules.

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Ray Blanco:

U.S. Scientists Use Plasma and Electricity To Turn CO2 Into Sustainable Jet Fuel

Scientists at Yale University have developed a system that combines plasma and electricity to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable chemicals, including methanol and butane.

The study was carried out by Lea Winter, PhD, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at Yale. For the project Winter and her team tried coupling plasma with electrocatalysis.

Plasma is often called the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids, and gases. It is a highly energized gas in which electrons have been stripped from atoms, thus creating electrically charged particles.

Winter said the approach could convert CO2 into fuels, pharmaceuticals, solvents, and other chemicals made from fossil fuels. "The sorts of multi-carbon products we generate with this approach are really useful for a lot of chemical industries," she added. It could also produce precursor chemicals for sustainable aviation fuel.

While CO2 is abundant, it has yet to be widely used to produce valuable products. That could be changing thanks to the findings of Winter and her team.

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