New Hampshire, USA

What the record does not yet resolve is the exemption's precise reach. The open question -- flagged as an unresolved-scope finding rather than a settled fact -- is whether the 2017 exemption covers custodial exchanges that hold customer funds, or whether it was intended to reach only peer-to-peer or self-directed transactions where no third party holds customer assets. This is not a cosmetic distinction: an exchange operating a custodial hot-wallet model in New Hampshire would need to know, with confidence, whether RSA 399-G licensing and bonding still apply to it, or whether the 2017 exemption removes that obligation entirely. Confirming the answer requires direct reference to the current in-force statutory text and any interpretive guidance the NH Banking Department has issued, neither of which was retrieved in this research pass; the record instead relies on secondary press coverage of the 2016 licensing extension and the 2017 exemption's passage.

A separate and unrelated development sits in this same module only because it touches state government's own relationship to digital assets rather than private-sector licensing: HB 302, enacted in 2025, authorizes the state treasurer to invest a capped percentage of public funds in digital assets with a market capitalization above $500 billion -- a threshold that, as of enactment, only bitcoin met. This is a public-investment authorization, not a licensing rule, and it does not bear on whether any private business needs a state license to operate.

Outlook

The scope question around the 2017 exemption is the module's single most consequential open item and the one most likely to generate a future correction, in either direction, once primary-source text is reviewed. Because HB 639's node-operator exemption interacts with the same RSA 399-G licensing perimeter, any future clarification of one is likely to inform interpretation of the other.

This is recorded as a negative finding rather than a gap in research effort: the absence of a state taxonomy appears to be a genuine feature of New Hampshire's regulatory posture rather than an unresearched area. That said, one adjacent question remains open -- whether the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation, which administers the state's own securities law (RSA 421-B), has taken any position specifically addressing digital-asset securities registration or exemptions distinct from the federal framework. No confirmation of such a position, in either direction, was obtained this pass.

Outlook

Because New Hampshire's approach is to defer to federal characterization rather than legislate its own taxonomy, developments in this module are more likely to originate from SEC or CFTC action tracked at the federal US record than from state-level activity. The Bureau of Securities Regulation question remains the one state-specific thread worth periodic re-checking.

This finding did not originate from the original baseline research pass for this module. That pass concluded no New Hampshire-specific statute addressed on-chain activity at all, and treated the absence of regulation as an assumed-green condition. A Challenger review flagged this as a probable material omission, and the correction was folded into the record on the strength of a legislative tracker record showing the bill signed into law, corroborated by press coverage of the signing. The traffic light for this module has been set to amber rather than green precisely because a bespoke statute now exists where none was previously recorded, and its practical effect -- including whether implementing rules or Department of Banking guidance will accompany the September effective date -- has not yet been confirmed.

It is also worth noting explicitly what the sourcing for this finding is not: neither the original baseline research pass nor the Challenger correction retrieved the NH General Court's own bill-text or session-law pages directly. The claim rests on a legislative-tracker citation and press accounts of the signing, which is a materially thinner sourcing base than a directly retrieved statute would provide, even though the underlying fact -- that the bill was signed and carries a September 2026 effective date -- is treated as probable given corroboration across independent press accounts and the tracker record.

Outlook

The effective date of September 8, 2026 is the operative date to watch: confirmation that the exemption, self-custody protection, and securities-law carve-out actually took hold as written, and whether any implementing guidance accompanied that date, would move this module from amber toward a more settled green, or would surface follow-on complications if it did not. Primary-source retrieval of the enacted statutory text remains the outstanding verification step.

The more significant open item this cycle is what the record does not yet contain as a confirmed claim. A Challenger review identified a probable additional development: New Hampshire's SB 482, reported in state and regional press as a crypto-ATM and kiosk consumer-protection law imposing a $2,000 daily transaction limit, a 48-hour hold on a customer's first transaction, and a 14-day window for fraud-related refunds, and reported to have been signed by Governor Ayotte in late July 2026. Every source supporting this account sits at the press tier, below the sourcing bar the record requires before a claim like this is asserted as fact. Rather than assert SB 482 into the record on that basis, the finding has been escalated for human review pending confirmation against NH General Court bill text or the Governor's office signing record.

Outlook

SB 482's status is the module's central open question. If primary-source confirmation follows, it would represent a second material correction to New Hampshire's crypto record within a short span -- this time tightening the consumer-protection environment for crypto-asset kiosks rather than loosening the on-chain-activity perimeter, as HB 639 did. Until that confirmation happens, the module's current basis for a favorable or unfavorable consumer-protection assessment rests only on the general RSA 399-G bonding requirement and the 2017 legislative record of regulator opposition to a related exemption.

Layered on top of the state picture is a federal reporting obligation that applies regardless of state tax posture: the IRS's requirement that trading platforms, hosted-wallet services, and digital-asset kiosks file broker-style disclosures on customer digital-asset movements and gains, commonly referenced as Form 1099-DA, effective for the 2025 tax year. No New Hampshire-specific override of this federal reporting requirement was identified, so it applies in the state on the same terms as elsewhere in the country.

Several adjacent questions remain genuinely unresolved rather than settled. Whether the state's separate Interest & Dividends Tax has been or will be fully phased out, and by what effective date, was not confirmed this pass, despite that tax's potential relevance to certain forms of crypto-related income. Similarly, whether any state sales or use tax applies to crypto-asset transactions was not independently verified, and no state-specific crypto withholding-tax rule was identified -- though the latter is recorded as an absence of findings in this research pass rather than a confirmed absence of any such rule. All three questions require direct reference to the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration's own guidance to resolve.

Outlook

The zero income- and capital-gains-tax structure is unlikely to change without a significant state fiscal-policy shift and should be treated as a stable baseline going forward. The Interest & Dividends Tax phase-out timeline, sales/use tax applicability, and withholding status are the three items most likely to be resolved by a future research pass that reaches the Department of Revenue Administration's primary materials directly, and any of the three could adjust the module's otherwise favorable green traffic-light rationale if resolved unfavorably.

One qualification is worth carrying forward: while the underlying FinCEN guidance document is a primary-tier source, its own publication date could not be confirmed in this research pass, so the currency of that specific guidance relative to today's regulatory landscape has not been independently verified. This does not undermine the core negative finding -- that New Hampshire has not layered additional state-specific cross-border restrictions on top of the federal baseline -- but it does mean the finding should be read as describing the state layer specifically, resting on a federal document whose own vintage is not pinned down in this record.

Outlook

Absent a New Hampshire-specific legislative development, this module is likely to remain stable and federally-anchored; any material change would more plausibly originate from FinCEN or Treasury action at the federal layer than from state action, and any such federal-layer change would be more appropriately tracked and detailed at the US federal jurisdiction record than duplicated here.