New Hampshire Strategic BTC Reserves Act Full Text

Source: New Hampshire Congress

Note: On May 6, 2025, US time, New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayote signed the New Hampshire House Bill 302 Act of New Hampshire. This marks that New Hampshire officially became the first state in the United States to pass the "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" bill.

Relative to enabling the state treasure to invest in precious metals and digital assets.

A bill on allowing the treasury to invest in precious metals and digital assets.

The Standing Court was convened by the Senate and the House of Representatives:

1. New terms, state finance minister and state accounts.

Amend Article 6 of the State Tax Code RSA and insert the following new clauses after Section 8-c:

6:8-d Establish strategic reserves.

I. New terms:

(a) "Exchange Trading Product" or "ETP" means any financial instrument approved by the U.S. SEC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the State Securities Specialist, traded on a U.S. regulated exchange with value derived from a pool of underlying assets, such as stocks, bonds, commodities or indexes.

(b) "Naughty Metal" means any of the following, whether in a coin, gold bar or other form:

(1) Silver;

(2) Gold; or

(3) Platinum.

(c) “Qualified Custodian” means any federal or state chartered bank, trust company, special purpose depository institution or state-regulated company custodial digital assets for approved exchange-traded products.

(d) "Safety Storage Solution" means a technical product or mixed product and service with all the following characteristics:

(1) The encryption private keys that protect digital assets are only known and accessed by government entities.

(2) The encryption private key that protects digital assets is only included in the encryption environment and can only be accessed through end-to-end encryption channels.

(3) The encryption private key that protects digital assets will never be saved, accessed or controlled by a smartphone.

(4) Any hardware containing the encryption private key to protect the digital assets is stored in at least 2 specially designated secure data centers distributed in geographic locations.

(5) The security storage solution enforces a multi-party governance structure to authorize transactions, enforces user access control, and records all user- initiated operations.

(6) The provider of a secure storage solution has implemented a disaster recovery agreement to ensure that customers can access assets when the provider is unavailable.

(7) Security custody solutions are regularly subject to code audits and penetration tests from audit companies.

II. Despite the RSA 6:8 regulations, the state finance minister can invest some public funds in precious metals and any digital assets whose market value averaged over $500 billion in the previous calendar year (Note: Only BTC market value is currently over $500 billion in digital assets) , which comes from the General Fund, the Income Stabilization Fund established in RS A 9:13-e, and any other funds authorized by the Legislature .

III. The State Secretary of Finance shall not invest more than 5% of the total public funds in any investment authorized in paragraph 2 .

IV. Digital assets acquired by any funds listed in paragraph 2 shall be held:

(a) Directly managed by the State Finance Minister through the use of a safe custody solution;

(b) represent the State by a qualified trustee, or

(c) In the form of exchange-traded products issued by registered investment companies .

V. Any precious metals obtained under this chapter shall hold:

(a) as an exchange-traded product;

(b) in kind by a qualified custodian; or

(c) Implemented directly in kind by the State or in joint with another State, with specific rules being formulated by the Treasurer.

2. Effective date.

This law takes effect 60 days from the date of its adoption.