US Congressman Nick Begich Wants America To Stop Selling Its Bitcoin – And Start Treating It Like Gold
Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK) sat down with the Bitcoin Policy Institute at PubKey in New York for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on his path from startup founder to Capitol Hill, his landmark American Reserve Modernization Act, and the two promises and dangers of artificial intelligence.
The interview provided a window into one of the most tech-savvy members of Congress — a distinction Begich didn’t see in his political career but decades earlier.
Begich’s resume reads unlike most of his peers. After an undergraduate degree in business at Baylor University and an MBA from Indiana University specializing in information technology and decision science, he spent time at Ford Motor Company before returning to Alaska to found a software development firm.
Starting with a credit card and a laptop, he built the company to about 150 employees in three countries, with a practice focused on early stage startups — helping founders turn PowerPoint decks into paid products, often in exchange for equity stakes.
He said that background shapes the way he works in Washington. “Congress can be a frustrating place,” Begich said. “You’re not the CEO. You can’t say, ‘We’re doing this.’
He drew parallels between the consensus-building needed in the House and the kind of obstacle course navigation that defines startup life — dealing with financial problems, entrenched rivals, and endless skepticism from investors. The difference, he noted, is that in Congress the runway is measured by election cycles, not funding cycles.
The Case for Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Begich got into Bitcoin in early 2013, working on the thesis that it could be a hedge against a declining dollar for his business.
He lost about 440 Bitcoin in the fall of Mt. Gox — “I got Goxed,” he said — but he emerged from bankruptcy proceedings with what he described as a positive outcome, along with his confidence in the asset.
That conviction is now law in the form of a proposal. The American Reserve Modernization Act, or ARMA, which has attracted significant funding, would create a way for the federal government to store Bitcoin seized through enforcement instead of selling it.
The idea, Begich said, stems from a simple question: if Bitcoin can serve as a reserve asset for the private sector, what can it do for the government?
His argument rests on two properties that he considers non-negotiable for reserve goods: scarcity and distribution. Gold, he said, satisfies both — it’s hard to produce, and broad ownership has built consensus on its value over the centuries.
Bitcoin, he argued, is approaching that same status within the digital asset ecosystem, representing about 60 percent of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization.
“Once those network effects are in play,” Begich said, “when you get to that cycle, you’re going to benefit a lot.”
He also built ARMA as an insurance policy – not a bet on Bitcoin’s dominance, but a hedge against the possibility that the dollar is not always the world’s reserve currency.
“Every 93 years on average, that savings changes hands,” he noted, pointing to historic changes in Portugal, Spain, France and Britain. To hold gold is to acknowledge that fact, he said. Bitcoin should be viewed in the same light.
AI: Promise and danger
The discussion shifted to artificial intelligence, where Begich was measured but right on target. He described two competing visions of the future of AI: one defined by abundance – cheaper health care, higher productivity, wider access to economic opportunities – and another defined by displacement, where the removal of human roles at scale creates what he calls “separation of purpose.”
On the question of open-source AI models, Begich pushed back on the idea that openness is a good thing that doesn’t qualify for advanced performance levels. He outlined a logical approach to keeping nuclear and other biotechnology research limited – some asymmetric risks, once ruled out, cannot be contained.
“The genie is out of the box,” he said of AI in general, but he asserted that the widespread availability of borderline models, especially post-AGI systems, in the hands of bad actors is a tool that has no more realistic responsibility for the damage they can cause.
He has been cited for explaining the strategy of China’s open source model, suggesting that it is more an act of openness than an economic tool — a way to undermine the case for investment in American AI development and to destroy the domestic ecosystem from the outside.
