Chris Rietmann | Oppose SB482

Dear Members of this Committee: I am a small business owner and operator, and have had cryptocurrency kiosks in my stores for over a decade. I am strongly opposed to this bill as it will not keep people of any age from getting scammed by criminals, but shifts any attempts to catch and punish them from the actual criminals to small business owners. As someone who has been in the space for many, many, years, here are a couple things I have learned: 1. The vast majority of people who used my machines were not using them because they were being scammed, but because they wanted to use money that was increasing in value and not being devalued due to inflation. In most cases, they ended up taking a Bitcoin Class from me, and their motivations were to understand the technology and how to protect themselves from financial loss with a completely new asset class. I have given in person classes on Bitcoin, and did them remotely to nursing homes residents during Covid. I have had classes where it consisted of whole offices of financial advisors seeking to understand this new technology. And because they could buy $20 worth of crypto to play around with they would use the kiosk instead of trusting an exchange to keep their money safe. 2. We saw people that were about to be scammed, and they would lie and lie to cover the truth up from anyone who asked questions. A foreign lottery claim they had to pay some fees up front, being an unwitting launderer money out of the country, bailing out a grandchild in another state, or most tragically, romance scams. After being in the crypto space for years, we had developed a pretty good sense of who they were when they went to the machine. We refused service to many of these people over the years, but the number of people being scammed using the machines were closer to 3 to 5%, not the laughable 98% being tossed around as fact. Even though there was no law requiring it, we had a moral reason to do so. 3. KYC hurdles, anti-money laundering laws, and legislation like this do absolutely nothing to dissuade criminals, who sadly will come up with new and innovative ways to prey on their victims. Laying regulatory burden on small businesses only benefits big businesses and will do nothing to protect consumers from themselves. Only education and instilling wariness in seniors will ever combat this problem. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin cannot have transactions reversed, period. Transactions are immediately written to a decentralized and immutable register, a blockchain. My first bitcoin transaction in 2011 can still be viewed on the blockchain, and it cannot be changed any more than a transaction that took place yesterday. Should a kiosk owner send bitcoin and have a waiting period to find out if it’s challenged places them in an impossible position. If they did all checks, sold the bitcoin in good faith and were forced to refund the US dollars, they would have a complete loss of the US dollars AND the real value of the Bitcoin they already agreed to be paid for. This is, in short, a de facto ban on crypto currency kiosks within the State of New Hampshire. Desperate victims of real criminals will simply drive across a state line because of that jailed grandchild, the chance of millions in a foreign lottery, or sadly, because of their “true love” who found them on the Internet. This poorly written and dangerous bill should be ITL’d. Chris Rietmann Alstead, NH