New Hampshire Rejects Plan for State-Backed Bitcoin Bond

New Hampshire has scrapped a proposed Bitcoin-backed bond that would have been issued under state authority.

CoinDesk reported on July 9 that the New Hampshire Executive Council voted 3-2 to reject the plan. The council, which reviews major state financial matters, sided with members who argued the deal could hurt the state's fiscal credibility.

The proposed transaction would have had the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority guarantee as much as $100 million of private bonds linked to CleanSpark, a Bitcoin mining and data center company. Moody's had assigned the bonds a Ba2 rating. Had it gone ahead, the deal would have been the first rated Bitcoin-backed bond issued under the authority of a US state government.

Keith Ammon, the majority leader in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and a longtime cryptocurrency supporter, called the vote "an extremely shortsighted decision" in a post on X. He urged the council to review the facts and reconsider the matter at a future meeting. Ammon later told CoinDesk that because council members are up for election this year, the outcome could change if just one member switched positions. He added that he would not give up.

New Hampshire has been at the forefront of digital-asset policy in the US. Even as debate over a federal digital-asset reserve remains unresolved, the state last year became the first to adopt a state-level digital-asset reserve.