Rep. Keith Ammon Is Trying to Make New Hampshire the First State to Invest in Bitcoin

On Tuesday, Rep. Keith Ammon addressed a New Hampshire House Ways and Means Committee on House Bill (HB) 302, which would permit the state's treasurer to invest in bitcoin.

On Tuesday, Rep. Keith Ammon addressed a New Hampshire House Ways and Means Committee on House Bill (HB) 302, which would permit the state’s treasurer to invest in bitcoin.

In speaking to the committee, he brought up the United States’ excessive debt and made the case for the state of New Hampshire to invest in bitcoin as a means to mitigate the ravaging effects of inflation.

As I listened to his petition, I got the sense that Rep. Ammon was a dyed-in-the-wool Bitcoiner, someone inside of the system doing his best to get members of the legislature of the state he calls home to see in bitcoin what he likely saw in it many moons ago.

After speaking with Rep. Ammon, I’ve learned that this is, in fact, the case.

The software developer and self-described “Bitcoin maxi” (who admits to also seeing some value in other blockchains and crypto projects) found Bitcoin two years after its inception and has been spreading the word about it in New Hampshire ever since.

As the founder of the New Hampshire Blockchain Council and a state representative who is the lead sponsor on the three current Bitcoin- and crypto-related bills in the state that are currently working their way through the legislative process, Rep. Ammon is perhaps the most notable Bitcoin advocate in The Granite State.

And the story of how he found Bitcoin is bad ass to boot.

Based on how you spoke at Tuesday’s committee hearing about HB302, I got the impression that you’re a long-time Bitcoiner. Is this the case?

Yes, and I’ll start by going way back. I heard about something called the Free State Project in 2004, and I moved up to New Hampshire to be part of that. Years later, I attended an event called Liberty Forum, which is an annual event put on by the Free State Project. In 2011, there were a bunch of anarchists that didn’t like the agenda of the forum — it was too corporate for them. So, they rented a couple of rooms at the hotel where the event was held and they had their own event, which they called the “Alt Expo”. I wandered into it and just happened to sit in the room. There were maybe six people there. They had a slide projector and they were talking about the precursor to Ripple, or XRP, which was RipplePay. It was pre-blockchain, but it was some kind of system of nodes and you would lend people money and IOUs would flow back and forth. It just didn’t click for me, though. But I kept in touch with that small group of people, and, a few months later, the idea of Bitcoin popped out of another discussion with them. I remember being like, “Wow, this is amazing. This is the thing that is going to change the world.”

Did you grasp it right away?

I come from a software development background, and I read books like The Creature From Jekyll Island in my early twenties, so my brain was primed to receive the concepts related to Bitcoin and the light bulb went off very early. I had a lot of understanding about big, abstract systems, which is basically what Bitcoin is. But then also the game theory behind it is just amazing. Bitcoin is like a virus that inhabits the human mind and spreads from person to person.

What has it been like trying to spread it to other members of government?

So, fast forward to 2015 — I was elected to the state legislature. We tried proposing a few Bitcoin-related bills around that time, but nobody understood Bitcoin back then. However, I’ve kept with it, and now it’s at the point where I’m a subject matter expert within our legislature. I’m in my fifth term, and Bitcoin has become more mainstream. Other politicians in New Hampshire reach out to me whenever they hear something positive about Bitcoin. Well, they reach out with negative news, too, but lately, there’s been a lot of positive news. So, I’m finding it a little easier to bring the legislature up to speed.

You’ve done a lot of work shifting the Overton window regarding Bitcoin in New Hampshire. And, in the committee hearing on Tuesday, you talked about using bitcoin as a tool to hedge against U.S. dollar debasement. You mentioned that the U.S. federal government is $36 trillion dollars in debt and that it will have to print more money to meet its debt obligations. How do people in government react when you bring up tough truths like this and propose bitcoin as a solution?

Our national debt is a very harsh reality that people often just overlook. However, there are quite a few gold bugs in our legislature, and they’re from the sound money school of thought. But the majority in the legislature, and just people in general, view the national debt like an asteroid that’s coming