ATLANTA — Three state senators filed new legislation to allow the state treasurer to invest up to 5% of any state fund in Bitcoin.
According to Senate Bill 178, a new section would be added to state statutes to give the State Depository Board the authority to let the state treasurer invest in Bitcoin.
The bill does not use Bitcoin in a colloquial way, referring to multiple decentralized online currencies, instead specifically saying the bill allows investment into the nominal cryptocurrency alone.
As proposed, the bill says the state would require someone positioned to act as a “qualified custodian” to hold the private keys for the blockchain transactions. The custodian would manage it on behalf of the state from a federal or state-chartered bank, trust company or a special purpose depository institution that the state holds digital assets in for an approved exchange-traded product.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Exchange-traded products typically refer to items on the various stock exchanges that are approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which are federally regulated.
Items on these exchanges derive their values, or worth and prices, based on “an underlying pool of assets, such as stocks, bonds, commodities or indexes,” according to the legislation.
However, cryptocurrency is unique in what can be referred to as economic volatility.
Channel 2 Consumer Advisor Clark Howard said as far as back 2018 that this was a major challenge to using cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Howard doesn’t believe cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are real money, because of their lack of stability in the pricing.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Time to be weather aware: Severe storms possible early Sunday morning. What you need to know
- Georgia lawmakers file red meat bill, would ban advertising plant-based or lab-grown items as meat
- Atlanta-based CDC to lose 10% of workforce in Trump administration job cuts
To that point, Bitcoin’s value has surged and fallen multiple times in just the last month. At its height since Jan. 14, Bitcoin went from $95,099 to $105,559.40 on Jan. 22.
Then it repeatedly rose and fell, hitting a monthly low of $92,883.21 on Feb. 3.
The current price Bitcoin is trading at today is $98,661.16, though the markets aren’t closed until 4 p.m., so its final price for the day could be higher or lower.
“The reality is that real money can be used to buy real things routinely and has stability in its value, and the cryptocurrencies don’t,” Howard said previously. “That’s why they are a strictly speculative endeavor.”
Allowing up to 5% from any given state fund would mean billions could be invested. Georgia had $36.3 billion in its Georgia Fund 1 assets in December 2024. An investment of up to 5% of that GF1 fund would be about $1.82 billion, at the height of what could be invested from the assets.
While the value of Bitcoin, and any potential state investments in it, may be unstable, the legislation does have a series of security measures it proposes to ensure Georgia’s funds are safe from bad actors.
The state would have to create a “secure custody solution” to protect the private keys for its potential Bitcoin investments, which must be made as a combination of a technological product or a blended product and service with multiple layers of defense.
Those layers include:
- The private keys that secure digital assets are exclusively known by and accessible to the government entity
- The private keys are contained in an encrypted environment and only accessible with end-to-end encrypted channels
- The private keys are never contained in or accessible by a smartphone
- Any hardware containing the private keys to secure digital assets is maintained in at least two geographically diversified secure data centers
- Secure custody solution must enforce a multiparty governing structure to authorize transactions, enforce user access controls and log all user-initiated actions
- Security tests must be done regularly through code audits and penetration testing
Should the bill pass, any digital assets purchased due to what the legislation allows must be held directly through a secure custody solution, on behalf of the state by a qualified custodian or in the form of an exchange-traded product from a registered investment company.
The state treasurer would also be allowed to loan some of these assets, so long as financial risk to the state is not increased, and with permission of the State Depository Board.
The legislation has not been before any committees yet for discussion, and its potential for full passage into law is not yet clear.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2025 Cox Media Group
