New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte signed House Bill 302 on May 6, 2025, giving the state treasurer statutory authority to invest a limited share of public funds in precious metals and digital assets. The measure made New Hampshire the first U.S. state to enact this kind of public-fund cryptocurrency investment authority.
The law did not order the treasury to buy bitcoin, set a purchase schedule or appropriate money for a transaction. It created discretion. That distinction was central on May 6: New Hampshire had opened a legal route for a state treasury allocation, but it had not announced that an allocation had occurred.
What HB 302 authorized
HB 302 added a new “Strategic Reserve Established” section to New Hampshire law. It allowed the treasurer to invest from the general fund, the revenue stabilization fund and other funds authorized by the legislature. Eligible holdings included gold, silver and platinum, plus digital assets whose market capitalization exceeded $500 billion when averaged over the previous calendar year.
The statute capped the authorized investments at 5% of the total amount of public funds. It also prescribed three routes for holding digital assets: direct custody by the treasurer using a qualifying secure-custody system, custody through a qualified institution, or an exchange-traded product issued by a registered investment company.
Those custody provisions were unusually specific for state investment legislation. A direct secure-custody system had to use encrypted key storage, geographically separated data centers, multiparty transaction governance, access controls, action logs, disaster recovery, code audits and penetration testing. The requirements recognized that authorizing a volatile bearer asset was only one policy decision; controlling the keys and operational risk was another.
Why bitcoin was the practical focus
HB 302 did not name bitcoin. Its eligibility test used market capitalization, and Bloomberg Law reported on May 6 that bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency then meeting the law’s threshold. That made the statute functionally a bitcoin authorization at enactment while leaving the text capable of covering another digital asset if it later satisfied the formula.
The formula also left an implementation question. The law specified a market capitalization above $500 billion averaged over the previous calendar year, but it did not identify an exchange, index provider, pricing convention, currency-pair methodology or daily observation time. “Market capitalization” for a continuously traded asset depends on both price and circulating-supply assumptions. The May 6 record therefore supported bitcoin’s practical eligibility, not a universal benchmark for calculating it.
A state-level institutional milestone
The New Hampshire House had passed the amended bill 192–179 on April 10, 2025. The Senate approved it by voice vote on May 1, and the enrolled measure reached the governor after both chambers adopted the same text. Ayotte’s May 6 signature converted a campaign by digital-asset advocates into enacted state law rather than another pending proposal.
The significance was institutional, not evidence of market demand. A state had accepted bitcoin exposure as a legally permissible treasury option alongside precious metals, subject to a quantitative ceiling and custody controls. That could influence how other state lawmakers framed reserve bills, but New Hampshire’s action did not change federal securities, commodities, banking or tax law.
What remained unsettled on May 6
The act was approved on May 6, 2025, with an effective date of July 5, 2025. Before that date, the treasurer still faced implementation choices: whether to invest at all, which eligible fund or funds to use, whether exposure should be direct or exchange-traded, how eligibility would be measured and what custody arrangements could satisfy the statute.
No purchase amount, transaction, wallet address, custodian or exchange-traded product was established by the signing record. The verified development on May 6 was narrower but consequential: New Hampshire became the first state to place a discretionary path for qualifying digital assets into its public-funds investment law.
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This article provides news and analysis, not investment, legal or tax advice. Digital assets are volatile and may result in total loss.