Industry presenters tell New Hampshire commission stablecoins offer 24/7 rails and tokenization promise but demand clearer disclosure and custody safeguards

Eugene, vice president of product at Bitco, told the Commission to Study that stablecoins can reduce settlement friction and enable programmable payments, but warned that design differences produce materially different consumer risks.

Bitco's presentation described four broad design families—fiat-backed, asset-backed, algorithmic and hybrids—and explained how pegs are maintained through a primary-market mint/burn backstop between issuers and eligible counterparties and through secondary-market liquidity and market-maker arbitrage. "There's a direct correlation with the issuer's ability to redeem," Eugene said, describing how market makers, liquidity pools and issuer redemption capacity together restore a peg during stress.

Why it matters: Consumers may see tokens marketed as a dollar-equivalent but face widely different redemption rights, reserve models and governance arrangements. That divergence carries implications for disclosure, enforcement and how states design pathways for banks and non-bank issuers.

Tokenized deposits and bank use cases: Panelists explained tokenized deposits are typically a bank-to-bank or private-chain instrument (used for internal settlement or correspondent banking) and are not identical to public, transferable payment stablecoins. However, banks could tokenize deposits and use those tokenized holdings as backing for public stablecoins, which would create operational and regulatory complexity that regulators should anticipate.

AI agents and programmable payments: Commissioners asked whether programmable payments and AI agents need deterministic settlement guarantees. Panelists said broader access to primary-market mint/burn functions (for more participants to mint/burn) would reduce the probabilistic nature of settlement seen by some secondary-market users, but flagged contagion risks if many agents act on similar programmable rules.

Consumer protection and state choices: Bitco recommended clear, standardized point-of-sale classification (labeling Genius-compliant payment stablecoin products), routine reserve attestations or audits, mandated custody with regulated custodians, and encouraged states to consider ways to help non-crypto-native banks engage safely in issuance or custody.

Next steps: Commissioners requested follow-up material and asked Bitco and other presenters to return with deeper technical and macroeconomic context. The commission also scheduled future expert sessions and said staff will circulate presentation materials.