Indiana Signs Law Requiring Crypto Options in State Retirement Plans
Indiana just handed crypto two very different verdicts in the same legislative session. On one hand, Governor Mike Braun signed HB 1042 into law on March 3, a bill that opens state-managed pension and savings plans to Bitcoin, crypto assets, and spot crypto ETFs for the first time.
On the other, legislators voted to ban crypto ATMs across the state entirely, citing a surge in consumer fraud that has hit older residents particularly hard. One law expands crypto access at the institutional level. The other shuts it down at the street level. Both passed the same week.
The pension bill, formally titled the “Regulation and Investment of Cryptocurrency,” was sponsored by Rep. Kyle Pierce, R-Anderson, and cleared the legislature on February 25 with a 59-33 vote before reaching Braun’s desk.
Under the law, certain state retirement and savings programs must offer participants self-directed brokerage accounts containing at least one crypto investment option, covering the legislators’ defined contribution plan, the Hoosier START college savings program, and specified public employees’ and teachers’ retirement funds.
Participation is voluntary. But the option now has to exist, which is a structural shift that no other state has mandated in quite this way before.
What the Bill Actually Requires
The mechanics matter here. Pension providers have until July 1, 2027 to have the digital asset provisions fully integrated, a reasonably tight runway given the custody, compliance, and system integration work involved.
Spot ETFs are permitted under the bill; stablecoin-related funds are excluded, largely because the lack of regulatory clarity around stablecoin yields makes them a harder fit within existing fiduciary frameworks.
Retirement boards retain authority to set allocation limits and administrative fees, meaning individual plans will have meaningful discretion over how much crypto exposure they actually allow in practice.
The law also bans discriminatory crypto taxes and blocks state and local agencies from prohibiting lawful crypto payments, self-custody, or mining operations, provisions that effectively embed a broader set of digital asset rights into Indiana statute.
Tom Perkins, investments counsel at the Indiana Public Retirement System, testified as neutral, saying the system had worked with the House to reach the current form and was “more or less happy with it.” That phrasing, not enthusiastic, not resistant, probably captures the general disposition of public pension administrators toward crypto right now.
The ATM Ban and What It Says About the Other Side of Crypto
The contrast with the ATM ban is worth sitting with. Rep. Wendy McNamara, who authored the ATM bill, called the machines “a powerful tool for scammers to prey on seniors and people in crisis.” In Evansville alone, residents lost roughly $400,000 to crypto ATM scams in 2025.
Nationally, the FBI logged nearly 11,000 ATM fraud complaints in 2024, a 99% jump from the year before. Violations of Indiana’s ban are enforceable by the state attorney general under deceptive consumer sales law.
Taken together, these two bills sketch out something like a governing philosophy: crypto as an institutional tool, structured and supervised, is increasingly acceptable.
As a cash-equivalent payment rail for the general public, with minimal oversight, it’s a different story. Indiana now joins at least 21 states investing or evaluating digital assets for public funds, a number that has climbed sharply since Trump directed his administration to establish a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.
Wisconsin has $321 million in Bitcoin ETFs. Michigan has $45 million in BTC and ETH ETFs. The pension door is opening, slowly and with fine print. The ATM window, in Indiana at least, just closed.
