Indiana’s Crypto Bill Favors Tech-Neutral Rules Over Bitcoin-Only Gatekeeping

Indiana is moving on digital assets without bowing to Bitcoin maximalism. State Rep. Kyle Pierce has drafted a crypto bill that avoids picking favorites, keeps the language broad, and focuses on access and protections rather than enshrining a single asset as policy.

The centerpiece is a design choice many states wrestle with: whether to hardcode market-cap thresholds. New Hampshire permits government investments only in tokens above $500 billion in market value—a bar only Bitcoin has cleared. Pierce considered that route but ultimately rejected it. He wants principles that scale across assets and time, not bright lines that fossilize today’s leaderboard.

That stance shows up in two concrete ways. First, the proposal would permit state-run retirement and savings programs to offer exchange-traded funds with cryptocurrency exposure—an institutional wrapper with regulated custody, daily pricing, and disclosure obligations. Second, it directs the state to build protections for crypto users and firms without advantaging one chain over another. Pierce was candid that not every coin is appropriate for public retirement menus; a token created “last Tuesday” is a non-starter. The gate is the ETF wrapper and prudent plan oversight, not a single-asset carve‑out.

His coalition-building has included industry groups like the Satoshi Action Fund—an organization that takes donations in Bitcoin and touts policy wins in eight states. Even with that input, Pierce resisted writing Bitcoin-only preferences into statute. That’s the right instinct. Market-cap floors often feel safe but can create perverse incentives: they ossify incumbents, invite index-hugging politics, and conflate size with suitability. In public plans, better controls exist—limit concentration, require SEC-registered products, set liquidity and custody standards, and review manager due diligence. Those levers manage risk without enshrining a single winner.

The bill also addresses miners. Proof-of-work operations keep networks like Bitcoin secure, but they draw scrutiny because of energy usage. Pierce’s language aims to prevent targeted, punitive actions against miners while avoiding special favors. Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake—cutting energy use by roughly 99.9%—underscores that consensus design is evolving, and policy should be neutral to those architectures. Pierce has engaged with a mining facility a short drive from his district, an example of how local economic realities meet statewide rulemaking.

Politically, the timing may be better now than in prior sessions. Pierce said crypto bills were hard to even get a hearing on, including earlier attempts to shield miners. The mood shifted after federal stablecoin legislation—the GENIUS Act—was signed into law by President Trump in July. With federal guardrails in place for fiat-linked tokens, state lawmakers appear more comfortable processing the rest of the stack. Pierce isn’t calling this a done deal, but he sees more trust and so far, no organized pushback.

What matters most here is the commitment to technology-neutral policymaking. It signals to builders and allocators that Indiana is writing rules for a market structure, not for a tribe. That can reduce regulatory whiplash, encourage competition in custody and market infrastructure, and give fiduciaries clearer lanes: use ETFs where possible, diversify exposure, and apply risk controls that are asset-agnostic. It also lowers the temperature on the cultural side of crypto; once statutes stop implying “Bitcoin or bust,” stakeholders spend more time on implementation details that actually protect savers and less on symbolic warfare.

If Indiana sticks with that architecture—ETF pathways for public plans, user and firm protections, and anti-discrimination language for miners—it can set a durable template other states can refine rather than rip out later.