New Hampshire releases blockchain report, calls for robust regulations
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has released the report of a commission he formed in 2022 to explore the pros and cons of virtual currency.
The report was the culmination of the year-long study conducted by the Governor’s Commission on “Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets” and provided interesting insights. In its summary, the commission stated that virtual currencies were unsafe and posed significant risks to investors in the industry.
“This report is comprehensive and timely, providing specific recommendations that will establish New Hampshire as a leading jurisdiction for the development of robust and effective applications of blockchain technologies,” Sununu said.
The report identified several trends in the ecosystem, including the emergence of blockchain technology as an “important technical innovation with many potentially important applications in our human societies and economies.” It cited the use of the technology in decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), decentralized applications (DApps) and metaverse.
Given the new technology’s pervasiveness, the commission recommended that New Hampshire lawmakers take the initiative to establish a regulatory framework to protect investors. The commission noted that adopting the recommendations in the report would give New Hampshire a fair chance to become an “attractive jurisdiction” for innovators in the virtual currency industry.
“The Commission specifically examined how the current legal infrastructure requires reform to ensure that longstanding rules, including rules designed to protect consumers and investors, can be clearly and effectively applied to applications that use cutting-edge blockchain technology,” said Commission Chair Bill Ardinger.
Coming in the middle of the chaos
The report by the Governor’s Commission on Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets comes on the heels of major upheaval facing virtual currencies in the United States. FTX’s collapse has thrown the local ecosystem into chaos as federal regulators and state governments quickly changed their strategies for dealing with the asset class.
In New York, miners face a difficult road ahead after Governor Kathy Hochul signed a proposal to impose a two-year moratorium on block reward mining involving non-renewable energy. There is growing concern that other states are simply adopting a wait-and-see strategy that could lead them to implement a similar ban in their jurisdictions.
The White House issued a comprehensive framework for the responsible development of digital assets back in September 2022 on the heels of the president’s executive order.
The report recommended that regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) conduct aggressive enforcement procedures against bad actors in the space, among other sweeping recommendations.
See: Blockchain for Public Data and Applications
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