Kansas Senator Wants Your Retirement to Ride the Bitcoin Rollercoaster – No Safety Bar!

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If you thought your 401(k) was a mystery, wait until Kansas starts treating your retirement funds like a crypto experiment. On Thursday, Senator Craig Bowser unveiled a plan so bold, it could make your local coffee shop’s “buy Bitcoin with a loyalty card” promotion look like fiscal conservatism: a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Because nothing says “secure future” like trusting an asset that fluctuates more than my mother’s opinion on pineapple on pizza.

Billed as Bill 352, this proposal would let Kansas’ Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS) gamble up to 10% of its funds on Bitcoin ETFs. Let’s hope the board has a better sense of timing than my Aunt Carol, who bought into “Bitcoin” in 2017 and now refers to it as her “digital regret.”

Kansas Bitcoin Bill 

The bill’s genius lies in its loophole: if the ETFs surge past the 10% threshold, KPERS isn’t obligated to sell-unless the board feels like it. Which is to say, they’ll probably hold until the next market crash, then panic-sell and blame the algorithm. Classic.

Annual reviews of this program will be submitted to the governor, because nothing says “accountability” like a spreadsheet and a stack of legal jargon. I’m sure the governor’s office is already prepping a team of astrologers and tarot card readers to forecast the market.

Kansas isn’t alone in this grand experiment. States are racing to turn crypto into their new fiscal hobby horse, likely because they’ve run out of ideas for tax hikes. Texas led the charge last November by buying $10 million in Bitcoin. North Dakota’s lawmakers are considering it as a hedge against inflation-because nothing balances a budget like a speculative asset. Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Missouri are all playing along, like a group chat where everyone’s convinced they’ve cracked the stock market code.

US States Move Toward Crypto Reserves

Texas, ever the trendsetter, decided to dip its toe into the crypto pool last November. North Dakota’s lawmakers are eyeing BTC as a hedge against inflation-because nothing says “stability” like a currency that lost 80% of its value in a month. Oklahoma’s Senator Dusty Deevers introduced the Bitcoin Freedom Act, which sounds less like financial policy and more like a Netflix movie starring Dwayne Johnson.

Tennessee’s HB1695 aims to create its own Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, while West Virginia wants to allocate 10% of certain funds to crypto. Missouri’s HB2080 is already past its second reading, which is either impressive or concerning, depending on whether you’ve ever seen a legislative process unfold like a reality TV show.

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2026-01-23 00:52