Kansas SB 352 Bitcoin and Digital Assets Reserve Fund

The introduced bill would have created the Bitcoin and Digital Assets Reserve Fund in the Kansas state treasury. The State Treasurer would administer the fund, and the fund would consist of airdrops, staking rewards, or interest earned under the amended unclaimed-property process. Expenditures from the fund would remain subject to appropriations acts and the state’s normal warrant and voucher process.

SB 352 is best understood as an abandoned-property and treasury-administration bill. It did not propose a general authority for Kansas to buy Bitcoin with ordinary state funds. Instead, it would have routed certain value generated from abandoned digital assets into a dedicated state reserve fund.

• Reserve fund: Creates a state treasury fund administered by the State Treasurer for airdrops, staking rewards, and interest associated with abandoned digital assets.
• General fund treatment: Requires 10% of each digital asset deposit into the reserve fund to be credited to the State General Fund, while prohibiting bitcoin from being deposited into that fund.
• Definitions: Defines digital assets to include virtual currencies, cryptocurrencies, and other digital-only assets that confer economic, proprietary, or access rights or powers.
• Custody process: Requires holders to deliver abandoned digital assets in native form to the State Treasurer or a designated qualified custodian within 30 days after reporting.
• Sale rules: Directs the administrator to sell exchange-listed digital assets at prevailing exchange prices and permits commercially reasonable sale methods for assets not listed on an established exchange.

The bill would have amended Kansas unclaimed-property law to include digital assets and to set a specific abandonment trigger. A digital asset would be presumed abandoned three years after a written or electronic communication was returned to the owner as undeliverable by mail, email, or another electronic messaging method. The presumption would cease if the owner took action regarding the asset or communicated with the holder in a way reflected in the holder’s records.

When unclaimed property reported to the administrator was a digital asset, the holder would report and deliver the asset in native form to the State Treasurer or the treasurer’s designated qualified custodian. If a holder had only a partial private key or otherwise could not move the asset, the holder would maintain it until the additional keys needed for transfer became available.

SB 352 would have allowed the State Treasurer to direct a qualified custodian to stake digital assets or receive airdrops. If the digital asset remained unclaimed three years after transfer to the custodian, any airdrops or staking rewards would be transferred to the Bitcoin and Digital Assets Reserve Fund. The fiscal note stated that potential receipts could not be precisely estimated because the State Treasurer did not have data on abandoned digital assets located in Kansas.