US state Bitcoin law: Alabama to Montana (summary)

• Scope: 26 states, Alabama to Montana in alphabetical order. DC is in the N–Z summary (us-states-N-Z-summary.md).
• Date checked: 2026-10-09.
• Per-state notes: legislation/us-state-<code>.md, linked in the last column. Each note cites its sources and gives the bill or statute number, status and source link. Government documents and court records are saved in full in sources/states/<code>/, each with an INDEX.md.
• Method: 1. Official legislature, statute and regulator sites first: bill-status APIs and pages, enrolled acts, regulator guidance and press releases. 2. The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) MTMA enactments chart dated 2026-10-08 (PDF) for MTMA status. 3. AARP's crypto-ATM protections tracker (AARP) as a cross-check on kiosk laws. 4. News, law-firm notes and bill trackers, labelled as such, for events too recent for the official sites. Where official sites blocked automated access, the state note says so and marks the affected claims (unverified).
• Research, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell.

Key to the columns

• Money-transmitter law and model:
• MTMA is the CSBS Money Transmission Modernization Act; "VC title" is its optional virtual-currency article.
• UMSA is the Uniform Money Services Act.
• URVCBA is the Uniform Law Commission's Uniform Regulation of Virtual-Currency Businesses Act. No state in A–M adopted the URVCBA by name. Louisiana's Virtual Currency Business Act is modelled on it. California's DFAL and Illinois's DACPA follow its structure (our comparison of texts).
• Bitcoin business licensed? Whether a business that exchanges or transmits bitcoin needs a state licence.
• Kiosk law: limits are per customer per day unless stated. "New" means a new customer, "existing" an existing one. Fee caps are the statutory maximum charge.

Table

Patterns across A–M (as of 2026-10-09)

• Kiosk laws:
• 21 of 26 states have a kiosk statute. This counts the bans and Hawaii's ban on kiosks that accept US currency.
• Outright bans: Indiana (2026-03-09, the first state) and Minnesota (from 2026-08-01). Hawaii bans kiosks that take US currency (from 2026-10-01). (Across all states, Tennessee, an N–Z state, is the third outright ban: Public Chapter 766, in force 2026-07-01, which puts it second by date. See us-state-tn.md; completeness check.)
• Ban bills failed or pending: Delaware (HB 441, died), Massachusetts (S.3048, pending), Michigan (HB 5986/5987 and SB 980, pending).
• No kiosk law: Delaware, Idaho (vetoed), Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana.
• Fee caps range from 3% (Maine) to 18% (Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky). Alaska caps fees at 10%; California, Connecticut, Iowa and Maryland at 15%. No cap was found for Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi or Missouri (our reading of the texts; the Colorado, Florida and Louisiana notes check this explicitly).
• MTMA adoption:
• CSBS lists 20 of 26 A–M states with a full or partial MTMA, including Delaware's SB 18 (2026) and Alaska's SB 86 (2026); both take effect in 2027.
• No MTMA: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana.
• With the optional VC title: Alaska, Delaware, Maine, Minnesota.
• UMSA lineage: Alaska (AS 06.55, until 2027), Arkansas (the statute is still titled UMSA) and Iowa (historically).
• URVCBA: no A–M state adopted it by name. Louisiana's VCBA is modelled on it, and California's DFAL and Illinois's DACPA follow its structure (our comparison).
• Licensing of pure crypto businesses varies:
• Yes: AL, AK (by regulation), AR, CA, CT, FL, GA, LA, ME, MD, MN, and IL from 2027.
• No: CO, HI, IN, KS (generally), MT.
• Unclear: AZ, KY, MA, MI.
• Reserve bills:
• No A–M state enacted a bitcoin reserve that spends public money.
• Arizona's "Bitcoin and Digital Assets Reserve Fund" (HB2749) holds only airdrops and staking rewards earned on unclaimed assets.
• Connecticut bans the state from holding virtual currency.
• Vetoed: Arizona.
• Died: AL, FL, GA, KS, LA, MD, MO, MT, IA (stalled).
• Pending or dormant: IL, MA, MI.
• Pro-bitcoin "freedom" statutes:
• Indiana: HEA 1042.
• Kentucky: HB 701.
• Montana: SB 178 and SB 265.
• Missouri: the "Constitutional Money Act" covers gold- and silver-backed electronic currency, not bitcoin.
• Arkansas: the 2023 right-to-mine law was largely rolled back in 2024.
• Tax:
• Missouri is the only A–M state that removed income tax on capital gains, including bitcoin, for individuals (from 2025).
• Alaska and Florida have no personal income tax.
• Arizona subtracts airdrops and gas fees.
• Most other states follow federal treatment. We did not retrieve state revenue-department guidance for most states (see gaps in each note).
• Multistate enforcement:
• On 2026-10-08, 34 state regulators reached a $2.5M settlement with Coinme Inc., which agreed to end kiosk operations by 2027-01-01. The A–M lead states were Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia and Illinois; the other leads were North Carolina, Ohio and Washington. Kansas joined (CSBS). Confirmed from the order itself (completeness check, 2026-10-09; Settlement Agreement and Consent Order, Appendix A): there are 34 agencies, namely 32 states plus DC and Puerto Rico. The A–M participants are AL, AK, AZ, AR, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IA, KS, KY, MD, MN and MS. A–M states not in the order: CA, HI, IN, LA, ME, MA, MI, MO and MT. The $2.5M is a $2.2M administrative penalty (Appendix B) plus $300,000 in costs to the seven lead states (Appendix C); a further $4M is due if kiosks are not closed by 2027-01-01 (Appendix D).
• State AGs have sued kiosk operators in Iowa (Bitcoin Depot, CoinFlip) and Missouri (CoinFlip).

Contested and fringe claims, flagged in the state notes

Each state note has a section 7 for contested and fringe claims. Recurring themes:

• Kiosks: industry versus consumer advocates.
• Industry (Bitcoin Depot, CoinFlip and others) argues limits and fee caps hurt legitimate users and that bans push victims to other payment rails.
• AARP, AGs and police cite FBI figures: about $389M in kiosk losses across 13,460 complaints in 2025.
• CoinFlip says it "championed" Missouri's law, which the Missouri AG now sues it under.
• Crypto-media claims contradicted by statute text:
• crypto.news lists fee caps in Colorado and Louisiana; we found none in the texts.
• crypto.news lists a Connecticut kiosk ban; the statute has limits and a fee cap, not a ban.
• "Montana's $50M bitcoin reserve": HB 429 was a precious-metals-and-digital-assets account.
• Several "bitcoin reserve" headlines describe bills that never got a vote.
• Each is labelled in the relevant note.
• Sound money and anti-CBDC laws (Missouri's Constitutional Money Act, Florida's HB 999 gold and silver law, Montana's SB 265 CBDC ban, Michigan's HB 4511): supporters call them protections; critics call them symbolic or constitutionally doubtful under the federal monetary power. Contested.
• Discrepancies between official sources, noted rather than resolved:
• Colorado's existing-customer limit: $10,500 in the act, $5,000 in the Division of Banking guidance.
• Colorado's MTMA effective date: CSBS and the Division differ.
• Mississippi's new-customer window: 30 days in news reports, 14 days in the signed text.
• The year of Arkansas's Act 174: 2023 in a law-firm release, 2024 in the legislature's record.

Not in this file

A statewide sources index (sources/states/INDEX.md) was not created here; each state folder has its own INDEX.md.