2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB1056

HB1056 recognizes qualifying gold and silver specie—precious-metal coins—as legal tender in Texas to the extent the U.S.

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Official caption: Relating to the recognition of gold and silver specie as legal tender and the establishment of a transactional currency based on gold and silver; authorizing a fee.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Dorazio, Hunter, Capriglione, Raymond, Harris. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

HB1056 recognizes qualifying gold and silver specie—precious-metal coins—as legal tender in Texas to the extent the U.S.
Nobody is required to offer or accept the gold-and-silver specie or currency for debts, deposits or other purposes.
Beginning with the later effective date, the comptroller may, rather than must, establish or authorize electronic systems through which depositors or vendors make and receive payments using currency backed by gold and silver bullion held in the Texas Bullion Depository.
Rules must address transaction and information security, valuation at the transaction time or in a commercially reasonable manner, a reasonable and necessary administrative fee, approved vendors including financial institutions, fraud prevention, and preventing transactions involving foreign adversaries or associated persons under the referenced federal regulation.

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What does it do?

HB1056 recognizes qualifying gold and silver specie—precious-metal coins—as legal tender in Texas to the extent the U.S. Constitution permits. The metal must show its weight and purity; it may identify its refiner or mint but cannot carry other names, symbols or designs, including suggestions of government issuance. This provision does not apply to U.S. coins or currency recognized under federal law and does not restrict Federal Reserve notes.

Nobody is required to offer or accept the gold-and-silver specie or currency for debts, deposits or other purposes. The act does not replace dollars or require merchants to accept a new payment method. Its legal-tender section took effect September 1, 2026. The remaining provisions take effect May 1, 2027. Final law · Constitution, Article I, Section 10

Beginning with the later effective date, the comptroller may, rather than must, establish or authorize electronic systems through which depositors or vendors make and receive payments using currency backed by gold and silver bullion held in the Texas Bullion Depository. The comptroller may contract with vendors and must prefer Texas-based vendors when consistent with state and federal law. The bill itself is not evidence that a payment system is already operating. Depository and metal definitions

Rules must address transaction and information security, valuation at the transaction time or in a commercially reasonable manner, a reasonable and necessary administrative fee, approved vendors including financial institutions, fraud prevention, and preventing transactions involving foreign adversaries or associated persons under the referenced federal regulation. The federal list can change; the bill does not create its own fixed list of countries. Referenced federal rule and its published amendment note

What changed along the way?

The proposal changed substantially before enactment:

Introduced and House committee versions: a much more detailed state-issuance system, with a pooled trust account, fractional-troy-ounce units, specific redemption procedures, and a September 2025 effective date.
House amendments: Representative Dorazio added an industry-standard merchant-fee ceiling. Representative Geren made implementation contingent on a final, unappealable federal-court ruling approving state authority. Both were adopted and appear in the engrossed bill.
Senate committee substitute: replaced that architecture with the legal-tender recognition and optional electronic-payment framework. It removed the House’s federal-court precondition, explicit merchant-fee ceiling, and detailed new pooled-account/issuance/redemption provisions. Do not describe those removed proposals as enacted requirements.
Senate floor: Senator Hughes replaced the text with the final framework and reorganized/clarified its provisions, including the express no-compulsory-acceptance rule for specie and currency. Senator Bettencourt amended Hughes’s amendment to delay the legal-tender section from May 2026 to September 2026 and the remainder from September 2026 to May 2027. Both were adopted, and the House concurred May 30, 2025.

The amendment index lists all four amendments. Governor Abbott signed the bill June 22, 2025. The final constitutional limitation remains even though the House’s separate court-ruling precondition was removed. History · Introduced · House committee · Engrossed · Senate substitute · Dorazio amendment · Geren amendment · Hughes amendment · Bettencourt amendment · Amendment index

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

People who want metal-backed payment options, participating merchants and approved service providers could gain another way to transact if the optional system is implemented. Participation remains voluntary. Users may face fees, metal-price changes and operational risks; backing by metal is not a promise of a fixed dollar value or investment gain.

The final indexed Legislative Budget Board note estimates a $5.538 million negative General Revenue impact for the 2026–27 biennium, with unknown fee revenue. Its annual cost estimate is $2.769 million: $769,000 for six staff positions, $1 million for outside legal counsel and $1 million for technology. It also identifies uncertain reserve needs tied to customer demand and anticipates no significant local-government fiscal impact. The bill itself makes no appropriation.

Read that estimate with its limits: the published table starts costs in fiscal 2026, while the final law delays most provisions until May 2027. The note is the Legislature’s published estimate, not proof of actual spending or a revised implementation timetable. Unknown fees are not guaranteed to cover costs. Earlier fiscal notes addressed the discarded issuance/redemption system; their descriptions must not replace the final text. Introduced fiscal note · Engrossed fiscal note · Senate-substitute fiscal note · Passed-second-house note · Final indexed fiscal note

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.