Digital assets have only found a new entry point for this old war; on-chain disputes do not yet have their own Delaware.

Written by: Conflux

On July 1, the New Hampshire HB639 bill was registered.

The terms translated are quite straightforward: local governments cannot restrict individuals from paying with digital assets, cannot impose additional taxes for using digital assets, and individuals running nodes, mining, or staking do not need to obtain a currency transfer license, nor are they considered to be issuing securities.

Looking at these terms alone, it is easy to categorize it under "another state relaxing regulation," and skim over it quickly.

But the true weight of this card lies in the last inconspicuous authorization: the Supreme Court can establish a "Blockchain Dispute Court" specifically to handle related civil disputes.

This clause is the real goal of the entire bill.

New Hampshire's Three Cards

As early as January 2025, HB639 was proposed, passed by the House in April of the same year, and registered after revisions by the Senate in July 2026, taking a year and a half. Its legislative basis comes from the report of the "Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets Committee" during former Governor Sununu's tenure.

Even earlier, New Hampshire had already secured a "national first": it became the first state in the U.S. to pass the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act (HB302), allowing the State Treasurer to invest up to 5% of public funds in digital assets with a market capitalization of over $500 billion—currently only Bitcoin meets this standard. Earlier this year, New Hampshire also launched a $100 million Bitcoin collateral bond plan, becoming the first state in the country to explore this type of capital market product.

Calculating this out, this is already New Hampshire's third card: first, opening the door for public funds to buy Bitcoin with HB302, then launching Bitcoin collateral bonds to trial the capital market, and now with HB639, establishing its legal infrastructure.

Benchmarking Against Delaware

To understand how stringent the setting of the "Blockchain Dispute Court" is, one must first clearly see the current landscape of corporate law across the United States.

Delaware currently attracts 1.6 million companies for registration, two-thirds of which are Fortune 500 companies. This dominant position relies not on low tax rates, but on its Court of Chancery system that has operated for over two hundred years—expert judges do not use juries, and the precedent system is so deep that lawyers across the U.S. often reference Delaware precedents. This "judicial certainty" itself is the core asset of Delaware reaping global company registration fees.

This moat showed a crack last year. A judge in Delaware's Court of Chancery rejected Elon Musk's $55 billion Tesla compensation plan, citing that Musk, as a controlling shareholder, had a conflict of interest. This ruling directly triggered capital migration: Tesla and SpaceX have moved their registered locations from Delaware to Texas, and Neuralink has moved to Nevada. Texas subsequently established its own business court system through legislation in 2023, Utah set up a commercial equity court, and Nevada is also promoting similar legislation.

A single ruling shook certainty, and several states immediately grabbed their legal infrastructure saying "we are more stable" to compete for company registrations. This is the universal script for all capital migration: money does not necessarily follow tax rates, but certainly follows "who adjudicates disputes, how quickly, and whether there is enough precedent."

What New Hampshire now wants to do is to apply this script to the new track of on-chain disputes—taking advantage of the fact that there is not yet a "Delaware" in this arena, to secure its judicial infrastructure first.

The Wyoming Model

This gameplay was not invented by New Hampshire. Wyoming already established its own Court of Chancery a few years ago, specifically to handle commercial and trust-related disputes, aiming to seize a share of the company registration market from Delaware, but it first threw its boot into the blockchain company niche.

In 2019, Wyoming passed 13 blockchain-related laws all at once, and to date has passed about 30, making it the state with the highest density of cryptocurrency legislation in the country.

In 2020, Wyoming approved Kraken's application to establish the world's first "Special Purpose Depository Institution" (SPDI)—Kraken Financial, which is the first digital asset company in U.S. history to simultaneously obtain both federal and state banking licenses.

Wyoming's lead is not maintained by a single license but is supported by nearly a decade of continuous investment—explicitly defining digital assets as property, legislating to protect private keys, and consistently staying ahead in national digital asset policy. This sustainability ultimately bolstered its true achievements:

In June 2025, Kraken officially moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Over the past four years, Kraken has invested $300,000 in the University of Wyoming's cryptocurrency education program and has co-hosted blockchain seminars, with Wyoming's federal senator Cynthia Lummis publicly welcoming them.

Notably, Kraken's employees continue to work remotely; the relocation pertains more to the legal entity and registered headquarters rather than a complete physical team relocation.

From a bank license to a true headquarters relocation, there were exactly five years in between. This is the key to understanding the real effects of such legislation: the capital migration brought by legal infrastructure is not immediate cash but an option that requires time to mature, and even when it does mature, it does not necessarily come with the physical migration of an entire team.

A War More Enduring Than Tax Rate Competition

New Hampshire's card looks clearer within the broader federal context.

In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, allowing banks, non-bank institutions, and credit unions to issue their own stablecoins; in May of this year, Congress was promoting the "American Reserve Modernization Act," aiming to establish a formal strategic Bitcoin reserve within the Treasury Department. Arizona and Texas are also pushing their own state-level Bitcoin reserve legislation. New Hampshire is not alone; it is the fastest runner in this nationwide "state-level positioning competition."

For the past half century, the competition among states for attracting investment has revolved around tax rates, subsidies, and land costs. This approach has a ceiling—taxes can be lowered to zero, and subsidies always have fiscal limits.

However, the legal infrastructure track has a much higher ceiling. Delaware does not rely on any particular year’s preferential policies, but rather on the depth of two hundred years of accumulated precedents and expert judge systems; once this moat is established, it is difficult to be penetrated by short-term policies or outpaced by quick schemes. This is precisely why Musk's loss in that lawsuit could trigger not just one corporate relocation, but legislative responses in three states at once; this is also why it took five full years from the issuance of a license to Kraken's actual move.

Digital assets have merely found a new entry point for this old war. The category of on-chain disputes does not yet have its own Delaware; whoever first gathers enough precedents and establishes the professionalism of judges will have the opportunity in the next decade to rewrite the rules of the oldest profit-driven logic in "company choice of registration location."