THEY NAMED IT PROOF OF RESERVE — THEN CUT THE ATTESTATION, THE WEBSITE, AND THREE OF THE FOUR REPORTS

Section 6 of this bill is called PROOF OF RESERVE SYSTEM. Read the substitute Bryan Steil filed at 4:56 p.m. on September 14 and count what is left of it. The introduced bill told Treasury to run an ongoing system, publish four reports a year, put a public cryptographic attestation in each one, show demonstrated control of the private keys, and post all of it on an official Treasury website. The substitute keeps the title. It drops “ongoing.” It drops three of the four reports. It drops “demonstrated.” It drops the attestation. And it deletes the entire line that named the website, so the word does not appear once in twenty-three pages.

What is left is one report a year, checked by an auditor Treasury picks. That is not proof. Proof is a number you can verify yourself against a chain anyone can read. A yearly report from the people holding the keys is a claim, and a claim is the thing bitcoin was built to replace. Hold the coins. Publish once a year. Fine. Just do not call that section proof of reserve. The chain is already public. The only thing being withheld is which addresses are theirs.