When most people think of New Hampshire, a few images come to mind: colorful trees, maple syrup, covered bridges, people with guns, and the great outdoors. They probably don’t think of high-tech cryptocurrency. But that’s changing, thanks to the great libertarian migration of the 21st century.
Anarchists and libertarians are moving en masse to escape oppressive political masters in their homelands to find peace and prosperity in tax-free, freedom-loving New Hampshire. With them, they are bringing their favorite freedom-enhancing technology: blockchain-based money.
Overstock.com reported that the day they started accepting bitcoin for payment, a third of all their orders came from New Hampshire. New Hampshire is only state that explicitly exempts crypto-currency businesses from requirements to register as money transmitters, attracting job-creating startups like Lamassu, LBRY, AnyPay, and more. No longer does Silicon Valley hold a monopoly on tech: the Swarm.City team could have launched from anywhere in the world, and they chose Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This week the Monadnock Shopper, a New Hamphire newspaper with 40,000 readers, published a front-page above-the-fold article about bitcoin and all the businesses in the area that accept it.
It can be hard to keep track of all the cryptocoin development happening in New Hampshire. That’s why David Jurist started Shire Cryptocoin, a website that tells you the closest businesses where you can buy and spend your cryptocoins, which ones they take, and when there are meetup groups in your area where you can learn and get your questions answered.
Shire Cryptocoin recently appeared at SomaliaFest 2017, and they were the best vendor there in my opinion, because they helped people get better money than what they had in their pockets. I used their service to trade bitcoin for litecoin, dash, and ethereum. I had a great experience, and I wanted to spread the word. Here’s a video I made about them:
Bitcoin Front Page Article Delivered to 40,000 Homes!
Since 1958 the Monadnock Shopper News has been connecting the people of this region with local businesses on a weekly basis. They deliver to over 40,000 households via postal mail – basically every home in Cheshire county. How exciting to see a feature article about local bitcoin-accepting businesses here in the Keene area as their headline, front cover story in this week’s issue!
The Shopper News’ reporter went to visit with Chris Rietmann, one of the proprietors of Route 101 Local Goods, a unique store featuring locall-sourced products that’s also where bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) can be spent, plus bitcoin can be purchased from the region’s only Bitcoin Vending Machine, and you can even buy delicious Vietnamese food from the “Bon Vivant Gourmet Street Food” truck parked just outside at 661 Marlboro Road in Keene. (more…)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Portsmouth, NH – The Seacoast Repertory Theatre’s bitcoin vending machine now offers Dash. The founder of Portsmouth-based digital currency company AnyPay, Steven Zeiler, says “Dash is newer than bitcoin and is more widely used on the Seacoast. Dash offers faster confirmation times and greater privacy than bitcoin.”
Bitcoin has been a popular digital currency in New Hampshire for years. Because of its recent rise in use worldwide, the fees for sending payments have increased significantly — from about 5 cents per transaction a few years ago to about $3 per transaction today. “This is great for large companies sending millions of dollars across the world instantly,” says Zeiler. “$3 is a real bargain compared to what they currently pay. But everyday bitcoin users accustomed to buying a $2 coffee with bitcoin are unwilling to spend an extra $3 just to use the digital currency.” This created an opportunity for new digital currencies to enter the market and specialize in faster payments and lower fees.
Seacoast residents have been using Dash for about a year, buying everything from soaps and salad dressing to haircuts and bacon. Some even offer a discount for customers who pay with Dash. But getting it was always a problem. Users needed to have bitcoin first, or trade a good or service to get Dash. Zeiler says, “Until now, it was only possible to get Dash in exchange for another digital currency. Now people can retire their dirty old federal reserve notes into the machine where they’ll be shredded. Just kidding.”
The price of one Dash is currently just under $200. Users can also buy bitcoin from the machine for under $3,000. Digital currencies offer users a way to hide their money from the government and buy things that would otherwise be impossible to purchase like high-quality lab-tested recreational drugs. New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu signed legislation this week extending protection to businesses that use digital currency from regulation, making it the most cryptocurrecy-friendly state in the nation.
The bitcoin vending machine is located to the left of the box office inside the Seacoast Repertory Theatre at 125 Bow St in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Seacoast Rep accepts bitcoin for tickets to their live performances.
On Friday, New Hampshire’s new governor Chris Sununu signed a bill, HB 436, which makes NH the first state to explicitly protect cryptocurrency like Bitcoin from regulation!
This is a historic day and this move clearly positions New Hampshire as the most bitcoin-friendly state in the United States. NH was already the #1 most free state according to the “Freedom in the 50 States” study and this makes it even more free. New Hampshire also now stands in even more stark contrast to New York, the least free state, since New York a couple years ago did the opposite and attacked cryptocurrency businessess with their oppressive “bitlicense”, which drove bitcoin businesses OUT of NY. Now those businesses can escape safely to NH as this just-passed bill offers them a safe haven from the ravaging, destructive effects of government interference.
Persons who engage in the business of selling or issuing payment instruments or stored value solely in the form of convertible virtual currency or receive convertible virtual currency for transmission to another location.
Liberty Lobby‘s Darryl W Perry, who headed up a campaign to contact the governor about this issue said, “After nearly three years of trying to get virtual currency explicitly exempt from money transmitter laws in the Live Free or Die State, I am happy to see this first major obstacle cleared.”
In 2015, a bill (HB 666) was passed that spooked many in the international bitcoin community as it added cryptocurrency to the “money transmitter” statutes. This caused at least one bitcoin business to cease doing business with customers in New Hampshire and quite a bit of buzz about New Hampshire losing its vaunted crytpo-friendly status. How did this happen in a state with the largest concentration of bitcoin enthusiasts per capita? Honestly, we were caught off-guard, but now that’s all changed. In 2016 a state house committee to study cryptocurrency was formed, whose meetings I attended and video recorded.
Representative Barbara Biggie of Milford, Sponsor of Bitcoin Protection Bill
After hearing from multiple NH bitcoiners in the committee meetings, state representative Barbara Biggie stepped up and filed this bill. As Darryl and I pointed out at the hearing, the bill as filed wasn’t quite what we’d hoped for. It created a new definition and exemption for “virtual currency” in the statutes, but still left in statutes a definition and regulation for “convertible virtual currency”. We explained to them that this was confusing and they should be striking the regulation for “convertible virtual currency” rather than creating the additional terminology.
You know what? They listened AND did us one better! The commerce committee amended the bill and turned it into the best possible protection for bitcoin businesses in New Hampshire! (more…)
On May 22nd of 2010, a computer programmer made the first recorded real-life bitcoin purchase – two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin. Now, seven years later, 10,000 bitcoin is now worth about 25 million US dollars! To celebrate “Bitcoin Pizza Day”, eight Keene-area bitcoiners met up Monday afternoon at Little Zoe’s Take and Bake Pizza (Keene’s bitcoin-accepting pizzeria!) and ordered up several pizzas. We chatted with owner Ed Forster while he prepared the pizzas that we would later take to the Think Penguin headquarters, bake, and enjoy. Conversation included discussion of the recent meteoric rise in bitcoin price (over $2,200 per BTC on “Bitcoin Pizza Day” to now over $2,600 three days later as I write this) and the frustrations many of us have over the internal strife on the programming side of the bitcoin world.
Keene-area Bitcoiners Visit Little Zoe’s to Celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day!
This week’s news about the possible resolution to bitcoin’s internal strife via a large consensus of major players in the bitcoin world is heartening. It’s been getting more difficult to justify pitching Bitcoin to businesses in the area. Due to the high fees, it becomes less-and-less likely that customers will want to actually spend it. However, because it was the world’s first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has a big lead on the competition – most importantly its large acceptance infrastructure for business by merchant services providers like Bitpay. Bitpay is great, but they only allow for business to accept bitcoin, not any of the competing alternatives like DASH, or Ether. Sadly, there’s not much serious competition at this time to what Bitpay is doing to help real-life mom n’ pop businesses accept bitcoin like we have in Keene.
Make It So: The Monadnock Makerspace – Now Accepting Bitcoin!
Because of the great crypto activists who’ve moved here as part of the active libertarian migrations to New Hampshire, Keene’s number of bitcoin-accepting businesses per capita continues to increase. Per capita, Keene is trouncing San Francisco by multiple factors, even if you factor out the internet-based businesses in Keene that are listed on the Coin Map.
This Spring, several new businesses began accepting bitcoin in Keene thanks to the help of the Keene Bitcoin Network:
The New Hampshire house of representatives recently passed a historic Bitcoin protection bill, that if it makes it through the senate and governor will make New Hampshire the opposite of New York. New York is infamous for its “bitlicense” regulations that drove multiple bitcoin businesses out of the Empire State. In contrast, New Hampshire, if this bill passes, would become a state with explicit protection against regulating Bitcoin businesses as “money transmitters”.
Last week, HB 436 had its public hearing before the senate commerce committee and a bunch of bitcoiners from across the state came out to sign and testify in favor of the bill, which would help ensure Bitcoin businesses continue to launch in and relocate to New Hampshire. It would further solidify New Hampshire’s place in the world as a cryptocurrency hotspot.
The speakers in favor far outnumbered those speaking against, which was really only the NH banking commission, who obviously does not want to lose hold of any of their precious power.
Those who spoke were on point and did a great job communicating with the senators on the committee. Turns out that two of those senators, Andy Sanborn and chairman Daniel Innis both already own bitcoin!
Will the bill pass the senate and be signed by the governor, or will the banking bureaucrats pull out all the stops to crush it? Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest on the NH Bitcoin scene.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Seacoast residents have been using Dash for about a year, buying everything from soaps and salad dressing to haircuts and bacon. Some even offer a discount for customers who pay with Dash. But getting it was always a problem. Users needed to have bitcoin first, or trade a good or service to get Dash. Zeiler says, “Until now, it was only possible to get Dash in exchange for another digital currency. Now people can retire their dirty old federal reserve notes into the machine where they’ll be shredded. Just kidding.”
