US state Bitcoin law — Nebraska through Wyoming, plus DC (summary)

• Scope: 24 states (Nebraska → Wyoming, alphabetical N–Z) and the District of Columbia
• Date checked: 2026-10-09
• Per-state notes: legislation/us-state-<code>.md (links below). Each cites its sources; government documents and court records are saved in sources/states/<code>/ with an INDEX.md.
• Method: official legislature, statute and regulator sites first (bill pages, enrolled texts, regulator guidance), then NCSL's 2024–2026 crypto-legislation trackers and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) MTMA tables (dated 2026-08 and 2026-10-08), then news for events too recent for official summaries. Where a fact rests on news or general knowledge it is marked in the state note.
• Research, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell.

1. The big picture (as of 2026-10-09)

1. Licensing Bitcoin businesses is split three ways. Some jurisdictions treat Bitcoin as "money" or "monetary value" and license anyone who exchanges, transmits or holds it for others (New York's BitLicense; North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington by statute; Ohio, South Dakota, DC, New Mexico by regulator position; Pennsylvania by statute since 2025-08-26). Others say Bitcoin alone is not money, so only fiat-handling triggers a licence (Texas, Virginia — by statute — South Carolina; Oklahoma's new MTMA from 2026-11-01). Two states exempt virtual currency outright (Wyoming since 2018; New Hampshire). Several are unclear or case-by-case (Nevada, New Jersey, Utah, Wisconsin, Oregon, Nebraska, Tennessee).
2. 2025–2026 was the year of the crypto-kiosk law. Of the 25 jurisdictions, 14 now have a kiosk statute (NE, NH, NC, ND, OK, RI, SD, TN, UT, VT, VA, WV, WI, WY) — Tennessee as an outright criminal ban — and three more had kiosk bills pass one chamber or die late (NY Senate-passed, NJ Senate-passed ban, TX Senate-passed in 2025). Regulators also moved by enforcement: Washington DFI against Coinme, Bitcoin Depot and CoinFlip; DC's AG suit against Athena Bitcoin; and a 34-state (35-regulator) Coinme consent order on 2026-10-08 requiring Coinme to shut its kiosks by 2027-01-01.
3. State "Bitcoin reserves" mostly failed. Only New Hampshire (HB 302, 2025 — permission, nothing bought as of Nov 2025) and Texas (SB 21, 2025 — funded; ~$10 million bought via IBIT in Nov–Dec 2025 per news; advisory committee named May 2026; custodian RFP) have reserve laws in this half of the alphabet. Bills failed or died in NM, ND, OK, SD, WY, WV, VA, TN, SC, UT (stripped), RI, PA, NC (House-passed, stalled) and OH (pending until year-end).
4. "Blockchain basics / Bitcoin rights" laws spread: Oklahoma (HB 3594, 2024), Utah (HB 230, 2025), New Hampshire (HB 639, 2026), South Carolina (Act 208, 2026) — self-custody protection, no extra tax for paying in crypto, no money-transmitter licence for miners and node operators, limits on local regulation of miners. Similar bills failed in ND, OR and WI, and Ohio's HB 116 is stuck in the Senate.
5. Wyoming remains the outlier (SPDI banks, digital-asset property law, DAO LLCs, DUNAs, a state stable token FRNT live since Aug 2025), but its flagship Fed-access test case was lost: the Tenth Circuit ruled for the Fed in Custodia Bank v. Federal Reserve (2025-10-31; en banc denied 2026-03-13; cert petition pending as of Aug 2026), while Kraken's Wyoming SPDI was reported to get a Fed master account (2026-03-04). New York and Wyoming signed a supervisory MOU on 2026-10-01.
6. New York's BitLicense is still the strictest general regime, now with updated custody guidance (2025-09-30) and a proposed stablecoin rule aligned to the federal GENIUS Act (2026-06-09); a Senate-passed kiosk bill (S 9891-B) and a DA-backed bill to criminalize unlicensed crypto businesses (S 8901) did not get through the Assembly.

2. Comparison table

Legend: Lic. = does state money-transmitter law reach Bitcoin-only exchange/custody? (Y = yes; N = no / fiat-only; Ex = statutory exemption; ? = unclear). MTMA = CSBS Money Transmission Modernization Act (Full / Partial / No; "+VC" = adopted the virtual-currency title).

3. Money-transmission licensing — details by approach

• Express statutory coverage of virtual currency: NC (G.S. 53-208.42(13) "maintaining control of virtual currency"), ND (NDCC 13-09.1 virtual-currency title), RI (R.I. Gen. Laws § 19-14-1), VT (8 V.S.A. ch. 79 subch. 10), WA (RCW 19.230.010(18), "equivalent value includes virtual currency"), PA (Act 7 of 2025), WV (2026 definitions, at least for kiosks), NY (BitLicense, a separate regulation).
• Regulator position that Bitcoin is "money/monetary value": OH (DFI Guidance 2022-01), SD (memo 11-002, 2019), DC (DISB Notice 24-BB-001; federal court in Harmon), NM (FID MSB activity list).
• Bitcoin is not money; fiat triggers licensing: TX (SM 1037, rev. 2025-01-28), VA (Va. Code: "'money' does not include virtual currency"; BFI notice), SC (AG Money Services Division letter 2018-12-05; Order MSD-19003), WI (DFI: depends on fiat), OK (from 2026-11-01 MTMA definition).
• Statutory exemption: WY (2018 HB 19), NH (RSA 399-G:3, VII, subject to consumer-protection law).
• CSBS MTMA status (N–Z): Full — NE, NV, NH, ND (+VC), OK (eff. 2026-11-01), SC, SD, TN, TX, VT (+VC), VA (eff. 2026-07-01), WV, WI; Partial — RI, UT; None — NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, WA, WY, DC.
• Uniform Money Services Act (UMSA): Washington's RCW 19.230 is expressly "the uniform money services act"; South Carolina's MTMA statute is titled the "South Carolina Uniform Money Services Act" (renamed 2024); New Mexico's NMSA 58-32 is indexed as the Uniform Money Services Act (unverified); Texas's former ch. 151 is commonly described as UMSA-based (unverified).
• URVCBA (Uniform Regulation of Virtual-Currency Businesses Act): no N–Z jurisdiction is known to have enacted it in full; Rhode Island's 2019 customer-property and disclosure sections (§§ 19-14.3-3.5, -3.6) closely track it. The Uniform Law Commission's enactment tracker is JavaScript-only and could not be read (unverified).

4. Crypto ATMs / kiosks — patterns

• Ban: Tennessee (PC 766, 2026). Context: news reports Indiana (March 2026) and Minnesota (May 2026) also banned kiosks; New Jersey's Senate passed a ban (S 2141); Albuquerque (NM) banned them by ordinance. [see us-state-tn.md, us-state-nj.md, us-state-nm.md]
• Licence + limits + refunds (the AARP-style model): NE, NH, NC, OK, RI, SD, VT, VA, WV, WI; ND and UT have limits but no refund mandate in the text read; WY requires a licence and leaves details to rules.
• Daily limits cluster at $2,000 for new customers (NE, NH, NC, ND, OK, RI, UT, VT, VA), with $1,000 in SD, WV (new) and WI.
• Fee caps range from none (NH, ND, RI, UT, WV, WI) to 12% (NC), 15% (OK; VT greater of $5/15%), 18% (NE, VA) and 25% (SD). New York's Senate bill would cap at the greater of $5 or 3%.
• Refund windows: 14 days (OK; NH as reported), 30 days (NE, NC, WI, WV), 90 days (RI, VT, SD with documentation; VA fees only).
• Unusual features: Vermont's moratorium on new kiosks (to 2026-07-01) and mandatory phone screening for new users over 60; Wisconsin's and Vermont's per-transaction customer photos; North Carolina's express permission for cities and counties to ban kiosks by zoning; South Dakota's block on transfers to offshore platforms closed to US users; Virginia's ban on calling kiosks "ATMs"; Wyoming's felony penalty for unlicensed kiosks.
• Industry contraction: the Coinme 34-state order (2026-10-08) requires it to stop kiosk operations by 2027-01-01; news reports Bitcoin Depot went bankrupt in 2026 and its machines were sold off (headline only — unverified).

5. Tax treatment — quick view

• No broad state income tax: NV, SD, TN, TX, WY (and NH on wages). Washington has no wage income tax but a 7% capital-gains excise tax plus 2.9% over $1 million (RCW 82.87.040) on long-term capital assets — DOR does not mention crypto expressly.
• Published guidance: New York TSB-M-14(5)C, (7)I, (17)S (2014 — virtual currency is intangible property; paying with it is barter); New Jersey TAM-2015-1(R) (2022 — follows federal; not sales-taxable as investment; out-of-state sellers of crypto have nexus); Washington DOR interim statement (2019 — Bitcoin payments are consideration for sales tax; mining income subject to B&O tax).
• "Payment neutrality" statutes (no extra tax just because crypto was used to pay): NH (RSA 359-V:2), OK (HB 3594), SC (Act 208).
• Property tax exemption for virtual currency: Wyoming (2018 SF 111).
• Proposed but not enacted: Rhode Island small-transaction Bitcoin exemption (S 2021, 2026); South Carolina exclusion of digital-asset gains (H 3751); West Virginia capital-gains exemption for gold/silver/crypto (SB 866); New York PoW mining electricity excise tax (S 8518 / A 9138) and 0.2% transaction tax (A 8966); Washington wealth-tax bills.

6. Enforcement and litigation highlights

7. Contested, fringe and "filtered-out" material (flagged, not endorsed)

The editor asked that material other sources reject be kept and labelled. These are claims or framings found during the research — attributed, not adopted:

• "Operation Choke Point 2.0" / political debanking of crypto banks — argued by Custodia, Caitlin Long and supporters (incl. Sen. Lummis as amicus); the Fed and bank trade groups say master-account discretion is about risk; courts so far side with the Fed on the statute. (us-state-wy.md)
• "Bitcoin protects against economic shocks / inflation" — legislative findings in failed reserve bills (e.g., NM SB 275) and promoter claims in Texas and New Hampshire; critics call reserves speculation with public money. No performance data verified. (nm, tx, nh)
• CBDC surveillance fears and "programmable money" bans — the premise of NC SL 2024-48, SC Act 208, WY HB 264, Utah S 298, and Tennessee's failed HB 2039 (issuers denying transactions over politics, guns or fossil fuels). No US CBDC exists; these are pre-emptive measures. (nc, sc, wy, ut, tn)
• Gold, silver and cryptocurrency as legal tender; gold-backed state digital currencies; an oil-backed stablecoin — West Virginia and Texas bills (all failed); constitutional limits on state legal tender are debated. (wv, tx)
• "Kiosks are a scam pipeline" (AGs, AARP, opinion pages; DC AG's 93% figure; Albuquerque's 90% figure; FBI loss totals of ~$246.7M in 2024 and ~$333–389M in 2025 as reported) vs. "kiosks are legitimate cash access to Bitcoin" (industry; no industry source was read directly). (dc, nm, nv, tx, nj, pa)
• "The BitLicense drove firms out of New York" — long-running industry claim; former NYC Mayor Adams called for scrapping it; NYDFS and supporters point to major licensees. (ny)
• "Regulatory land grab" — Coinbase's description of Oregon's suit; "Oregon secretly reversed its position" — Coinbase's public-records counter-suit claim. (or)
• Staking-as-a-service is not a security — declared by South Carolina statute (2026); New Jersey still pursues the opposite theory against Coinbase. (sc, nj)
• "Right to mine" / Blockchain Basics — promoted nationally by Bitcoin advocacy groups (attribution to specific groups unverified); opponents cite noise, grid strain and loss of local control. (ok, ut, nh, sc)
• "First state" and "most crypto-friendly state" labels (New Hampshire's reserve; Wyoming; Nevada; Texas "Bitcoin capital") — media or promoter framings, not verifiable facts.
• Interpretive split on whether Bitcoin is "money" — Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, DC (yes) vs. Texas, Virginia, South Carolina (no). Not fringe, but contested and consequential.

8. Federal context (one line each; covered elsewhere in this repo)

• The US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act market-structure bill on 2026-09-15 (multiple news headlines; not read in full). FinCEN issued a kiosk notice, FIN-2025-NTC1, on 2025-08-04 (link seen in search results: https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FinCEN-Notice-CVCKIOSK.pdf — not read here). NYDFS's 2026 stablecoin proposal is framed around the federal GENIUS Act. See the repo's federal notes.

9. Gaps and caveats

• Several bill statuses come from NCSL's 2026 tracker (last updated 2026-03-25) where official pages were JavaScript-only (Virginia LIS, Wyoming web front end, some Rhode Island and Oklahoma pages); these are marked "(final status unverified)" in the state notes.
• Not found or not read: Tennessee TDFI's 2015 virtual-currency memo; New Mexico's statute text; DFR (Oregon) and DOBI (New Jersey) crypto guidance (none found); most state revenue departments' crypto guidance; Wyoming kiosk rules; the outcome of NH's reserve, Texas's custodian RFP, Custodia's cert petition, Oregon v. Coinbase remand, Athena and the Tennessee ban litigation; NYDFS amounts for Paxos and Genesis; Virginia chapter numbers.
• Uniform Law Commission enactment data (URVCBA, UMSA) could not be read directly.

Sources (cross-state)

• NCSL, "Cryptocurrency, Digital or Virtual Currency and Digital Assets" legislation pages for 2024 (updated 2024-11-18), 2025 (updated 2025-09-11) and 2026 (updated 2026-03-25). https://www.ncsl.org/financial-services/cryptocurrency-digital-or-virtual-currency-and-digital-assets-2026-legislation (and -2025-, -2024-) — read 2026-10-09
• CSBS, "MTMA State Enactments" (PDF dated 2026-10-08). https://www.csbs.org/sites/default/files/external-link-files/10.8.26%20MTMA%20State%20Enactments.pdf — read 2026-10-09 (summary; CSBS is a non-government association)
• CSBS, "2022–2026 Money Transmission Modernization Act Proposed and Enacted Legislation" (August 2026). https://www.csbs.org/mtma-legislative-update-august-2026 — read 2026-10-09
• Washington DFI press release, 2026-10-08, Coinme multistate consent order. https://dfi.wa.gov/news/press/washington-state-dfi-enters-multi-state-consent-order-coinme-inc
• ABA Banking Journal, "Crypto exchange agrees to shut down 'crypto ATMs' as part of settlement," 2026-10-08. https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2026/10/crypto-exchange-agrees-to-shut-down-crypto-atms-as-part-of-settlement/ — summary only
• Yahoo News (NorthJersey.com), "N.J. wants to be the 4th state to ban these high-tech crypto ATMs," 2026-06-15 (Indiana, Tennessee, Minnesota bans). https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/n-j-wants-4th-state-134115283.html — summary only
• State-specific primary sources: see each legislation/us-state-<code>.md and sources/states/<code>/INDEX.md.