A Texas lawmaker has filed legislation that would allow every city and county in the state to commit up to $10 million of public money to bitcoin or another cryptocurrency — while leaving open how such holdings would actually be kept.

House Bill 815 was filed Monday by Rep. Ron Reynolds, a Democrat from Missouri City, on the first day of prefiling for the 90th Texas Legislature. The measure carries the caption “Relating to the authority of a municipality or county to invest money in cryptocurrencies,” and the introduced text posted on the Texas Legislature’s website runs just two sections.

The bill would amend the Public Funds Investment Act, Chapter 2256 of the Texas Government Code, by adding a new Section 2256.0165 titled “Authorized Investments: Cryptocurrency.” Under that section, “a municipality or county may invest not more than $10 million of its money or money under its control in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.” If enacted, the authority would take effect Sept. 1, 2027.

The $10 million figure functions as a cap on each individual city or county, not a single statewide pool. Texas has 254 counties and more than 1,200 incorporated municipalities, and because the bill permits rather than requires participation, any statewide total would be the sum of separate local decisions. School districts and other local governments covered by the investment act are excluded.

What the bill does and does not say

The measure borrows its definitions of “Bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” from Section 403.701 of the Government Code — language written into law last year by Senate Bill 21, which created the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Under those definitions, bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency created by a peer-to-peer network that operates independently of any central authority or bank, while cryptocurrency is described more broadly as a virtual currency that uses cryptography to secure transactions recorded on a distributed ledger, such as a blockchain.

That means municipalities would not be limited to bitcoin. The bill also does not import the reserve law’s requirement that coins bought for the state fund carry an average market capitalization of at least $500 billion over the most recent 24-month period, nor its provisions on cold storage and qualified custodians.

The Public Funds Investment Act already obliges local governments to adopt a written investment policy that emphasizes safety of principal and liquidity, and to invest with the care a prudent person would use in managing their own affairs. A city or county would still need to add cryptocurrency to that policy before making any purchase — in practice, an action for the city council or county commissioners court that adopts those policies. The act’s existing authorized-investments list is built around instruments such as obligations of the U.S. government and its agencies, municipal securities, certificates of deposit, and money market mutual funds; the new section would add cryptocurrency alongside them. The new section itself is silent on custody, on audits specific to digital assets, and on how a loss would be handled.

A narrower version of last year’s proposal

Reynolds filed a broader measure, House Bill 4258, on March 10, 2025, together with Rep. Mihaela Plesa. That bill would have let the comptroller invest as much as $250 million of the Economic Stabilization Fund — the state’s rainy day fund — in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, and it included the same $10 million cap for cities and counties. It was referred to the House Delivery of Government Efficiency Committee on April 1, 2025, and did not become law.

House Bill 815 drops the rainy day fund language and retains only the local-government piece. The state’s own reserve was created separately through Senate Bill 21, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed in June 2025.

The Texas Comptroller’s office subsequently purchased $5 million of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust on Nov. 20, 2025, as a placeholder while it worked on direct custody, The Texas Tribune reported, with the office confirming the purchase. A second purchase brought the reserve’s IBIT exposure to about $10 million. In May, Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock named an advisory committee and issued a request for proposals for a custodian — a step toward holding bitcoin directly.

What comes next

Prefiling for the 90th Texas Legislature opened Monday, and the regular session convenes Jan. 12, 2027. The bill has been filed but has not yet been referred to a committee, a step that typically waits until lawmakers convene. As introduced, the two-section text leaves out the guardrails attached to the state’s reserve — the $500 billion market-cap floor and the custody rules — so any such requirements would have to come through amendments or a committee substitute, a detail to watch as the bill advances. Even if it clears both chambers and is signed into law, cities and counties could not exercise the new authority until Sept. 1, 2027.

This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Micah Zimmerman.