New Hampshire rejects $100M Bitcoin-backed bond after public finance hearing

New Hampshire’s Executive Council rejected a proposed $100 million Bitcoin-backed municipal bond in a 3-2 vote on July 8, stopping a Business Finance Authority structure that would have moved BTC collateral into a state-linked public finance process.

The vote came after the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority said last November that its board had approved a $100 million inaugural issuance backed by Bitcoin, while noting that issuance would still require approval by the Governor and Executive Council.

That approval did not come.

As the Boston Globe reported, the councilors voted against the plan after a motion to table the proposal failed to receive a second.

Why the rejection matters

The bond was structured by Wave Digital Assets, Rosemawr Management, and the BFA, with Orrick advising the authority and BitGo Trust Company serving as the custodian for the Bitcoin collateral. The BFA announcement said the deal was designed so taxpayer funds and state guarantees would not be at risk, a point also emphasized by Governor Kelly Ayotte and BFA Executive Director James Key-Wallace.

Moody's assigned provisional Ba2 ratings to up to $100 million in taxable revenue bonds for the Waverose Finance Project. CryptoSlate previously covered that rating as a credit-market milestone because the bonds are tied to a loan to NH CleanSpark Borrower Trust 2026-1, with Bitcoin pledged as collateral.

The public approval setting is now a core part of the narrative. The vote showed that a rated Bitcoin-backed structure could still fail once it moved from credit design into a government approval room. That makes the rejection less about Bitcoin’s market price and more about whether public finance officials are ready to attach state-linked legitimacy to BTC collateral, even in a conduit structure that backers said would not expose taxpayers to repayment risk.

The earlier Moody's rating and CryptoSlate's prior coverage already addressed how Bitcoin could be priced, haircut, and liquidated inside the bond structure. The council vote addressed the public-finance question separately: officials were unwilling to let this version of the structure enter the municipal bond pipeline.

The decision turns on what public finance is willing to accept as collateral, and how far a Bitcoin-backed structure can move once it leaves the world of crypto credit specialists and enters a government approval room.

The final action leaves New Hampshire’s Bitcoin-backed bond experiment unfinished at the public approval stage. BFA officials could bring the idea back, but this version of the proposal failed before it could move from a rated credit structure into an approved municipal bond issuance.

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