{"id":72436,"date":"2025-08-19T21:04:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/?p=72436"},"modified":"2025-08-19T21:26:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:26:24","slug":"wyoming-frontier-stablecoin-mark-gordon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/wyoming-frontier-stablecoin-mark-gordon\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyoming announces Frontier, a government-backed stablecoin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Starting next month, those fatigued by purchasing things with paper money or credit cards can swap their dollars for a new digital currency backed by the Wyoming state government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon on Tuesday announced the upcoming release of Frontier Stable Token<\/a>, an alternative to currencies backed by traditional, centralized payment systems. The offering will make Wyoming, a state of some 590,000 residents, fewer than Seattle, the first public-sector organization to issue a blockchain-based stabletoken, a type of cryptocurrency backed by cash or assets that\u2019s designed to be less volatile than the likes of bitcoin or Ethereum, which frequently make exponential leaps or stumbles in value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while the governor and those on the commission governing the state\u2019s new token speak in the same grand vocabulary of most cryptocurrency proponents, details on the precise goals of the state’s innovation are vague. (Members of the Wyoming Stable Token Commission did not immediately respond to requests to be interviewed for this article.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LayerZero Labs, a company that will issue the tokens across seven blockchains, explains in marketing materials<\/a> that Wyoming\u2019s token has the oversight advantages of a government-backed currency, along with the \u201cinstant, low-cost digital payments that work 24\/7 across borders\u201d that digital currencies are known for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When repeatedly asked onstage during a blockchain conference in Washington, D.C., last March about the token\u2019s potential uses or benefits, Gordon\u2019s responses ranged from idealistic \u2014 \u201cthis country is formed on capitalism\u201d \u2014 to oblique \u2014 \u201cWyoming is a place people come to innovate. We don\u2019t like regulation very much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon being prompted a third time for his favorite prospective use of the upcoming token, Gordon, who before becoming governor spent seven years as the state’s treasurer, supposed that it could be used for settlements, such as when out-of-state providers purchase Wyoming’s coal- or natural gas-powered energy. (Wyoming is the nation\u2019s fourth largest energy provider, with about two-thirds of its energy shipped to the West Coast.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe, he suggested, it could be used by companies paying to build new data centers that power generative artificial intelligence platforms. (Unlike notoriously power-hungry proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, Wyoming\u2019s token uses a proof-of-stake cryptographic proofing method, which the state claims requires an amount of energy equivalent to browsing the internet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one point Gordon did make clear was that he didn\u2019t want the rest of the world to gain the edge over the United States on a hot new technology: \u201cNot that a little state like Wyoming can make all the difference in the world, but we sure can start the migration of the investment in our bonds back into our country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with Texas\u2019 \u201cstrategic\u201d bitcoin reserve, a $10 million cache<\/a> of cryptocurrencies that the state legally can not touch, enticing investors to build new businesses in the state seems to be near the top of both governors\u2019 agendas. There are things that digital currencies do better than traditional payment systems \u2014 the transactions are faster, the fees are generally cheaper and some users seem to enjoy using a decentralized platform that eschews the need of a bank to organize transactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But cryptocurrency\u2019s failure to evolve beyond a speculative asset or a means of hiding shameful or illegal activity may be because today\u2019s banks are reliable and fast enough for most people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no use case. It is not solving any problem,\u201d said Bill Maurer, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine who studies the technologies behind financial exchanges. \u201cIt is taking advantage of the hype cycle around stablecoins and crypto in general that we\u2019ve seen since Trump got reelected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump family has, by one accounting<\/a>, earned more than $2.3 billion from various digital asset schemes since he entered the White House last January. But in addition to his personal enrichment and its fanfare, the president is encouraging new legal frameworks that encourage crypto adoption. Most notable was last month\u2019s GENIUS Act, which the New York Times described as<\/a> the government giving its seal of approval to stablecoins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Wyoming, the token could do some good. The state is required by law to hold 102% of the token\u2019s holdings in cash and short-duration treasuries to ensure liquidity. And any dollars generated by interest are funneled into a fund for the Wyoming School Foundation. But even stablecoins aren\u2019t completely stable \u2014 and if yields decline, what then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maurer, who\u2019s also dean of the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine, said he \u201cwon\u2019t lose any sleep\u201d over the prospect of Wyoming\u2019s stablecoin, which bears the ticker FRNT, upsetting the financial markets because he doesn\u2019t think there\u2019s much demand. But if such digital assets do take off, he said, it would create problems after people started emptying their bank accounts. The cash that banks leverage against loans would no longer be available, cramping the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if market disruption is unlikely, Maurer\u2019s chief concern is aesthetic: Wyoming\u2019s token has a \u201cterrible\u201d name. In the world of finance, he said, the name Frontier harkens back to the era of wildcat banking in the mid-19th century, when unregulated railroads and banks issued their own paper currencies, \u201csupposedly backed by gold reserves, but in actuality often backed by nothing.\u201d Institutions that went bust before the federal government passed the National Bank Act in 1863 sometimes trailed hundreds of thousands of dollars in notes, leaving their credulous patrons holding worthless simulacrums of real money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials said Frontier Stable Token will be available for purchase next month, tracked on seven 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