Idaho Blockchain Basics Act

The proposal would have amended Idaho’s existing digital-assets chapter in Title 28 and related tax and state-government provisions. It defined terms including blockchain, blockchain protocol, digital asset mining, digital asset mining business, hardware wallet, node, and self-hosted wallet. It also would have revised Idaho’s Uniform Commercial Code definition of “money” so that a central bank digital currency, as defined in proposed Section 67-2360, would not be included.

• Mining protections: State agencies and local governments would not have been able to impose requirements on digital asset mining businesses that were not also imposed on data centers in the same jurisdiction.
• Home and industrial mining: The engrossed bill would have prevented local rules that barred qualifying industrial-zone mining or compliant private-residence mining.
• Licensing treatment: Persons engaged in digital asset mining, and persons operating nodes or transferring digital assets on a blockchain protocol, would not have needed a money transmitter license solely for those activities.
• Wallet and payment use: The bill would have barred state and local governments from prohibiting, restricting, or impairing a person’s ability to use digital assets for legal goods or services or to self-custody digital assets through a self-hosted or hardware wallet.

The proposed CBDC section would have applied to Idaho state government, counties, cities, and local political subdivisions. It would have prohibited those public bodies from accepting, transacting, trading, or exchanging a central bank digital currency as payment; participating in Federal Reserve CBDC tests; establishing CBDC programs; participating in federal programs contingent on CBDC use; or accepting CBDC-conditioned federal grants or awards. The section also would have treated intentional violations by public officers or employees as misuse of public money.

The tax amendment would have added digital assets, when used as tender for executing a purchase, to Idaho’s intangible personal property exemption. The engrossed bill listed January 1, 2025, as the proposed effective date. Because the bill failed in the House, that date did not become an operative legal effective date.