The state’s five-member Executive Council rejected the first-in-the-nation deal 3-2, unwilling to attach New Hampshire’s name to a volatile asset even though backers said it carried no taxpayer risk.
Posted July 10, 2026 at 3:29 pm EST.
New Hampshire’s Executive Council voted down a proposed $100 million municipal bond backed by Bitcoin on Wednesday, killing what state officials had promoted as a first-in-the-nation venture in public bitcoin finance, according to local news outlet New Hampshire Union Leader.
The five-member council rejected the plan 3-2, New Hampshire Union Leader reported Wednesday. Councilors David Wheeler, Karen Liot Hill and Janet Stevens voted against it, while John Stephen and Joseph Kenney voted in favor.
Governor Kelly Ayotte and the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority had billed the deal as a way to draw digital-finance firms to the Granite State. The council was not sold.
Liot Hill, the council’s lone Democrat, was quoted by the Boston Globe as saying she was “not opposed to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general.” But the state, she reportedly said at the meeting, was being asked to “lend a kind of legitimacy to a financial transaction” tied to a volatile, emerging asset class, adding that the novel plan warranted more study before a vote.
Business Finance Authority executive director James Key-Wallace disputed that framing. Bitcoin was no longer emerging, he reportedly said during the meeting: “They’ve ’emerged.’ They’re here.” He stressed the bond carried no risk to taxpayers. Structured as a conduit revenue bond, it would have routed money from private investors to a private borrower, a subsidiary of bitcoin miner CleanSpark, with cryptocurrency pledged as collateral. The state would owe nothing even if Bitcoin’s price collapsed, and over a three-year term the authority stood to collect fees on any gains for small-business, child-care and housing programs, he said. Moody’s gave the deal a provisional Ba2 grade, a speculative, or “junk,” rating.
The rejection was a setback for a state that has moved aggressively on crypto. Ayotte in 2025 signed a law making New Hampshire the first state to enact a strategic bitcoin reserve, amid a broader push to fold bitcoin into public balance sheets at the state and federal level.
Key-Wallace said he would bring the proposal back to the council in the future. Ayotte said she respected the outcome, according to New Hampshire Union Leader.
“I wanted to see it pass but the council feels that there needs to be more time to consider these matters and I understand and respect that,” Ayotte was quoted as saying.
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