Original Title: "The Hometown of Brokeback Mountain Is Issuing a New American Dream"
Original Author: Bootly, Bitpush News
In the map of the United States, Wyoming is often an overlooked "western treasure."
When it comes to this topic, most people's first reaction is either the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, which erupts reliably, or the snow-capped peaks of Grand Teton that remain covered in snow all year round.
This is the U.S. state with the smallest population. With an area of nearly 260,000 square kilometers, it is home to less than 600,000 people—a number that is even smaller than the population of a single suburban town in Shanghai.
In the memory of literature and film, this place is the harsh wilderness described by Annie Proulx as "irreparable, only to be endured," the rugged mountains that confine cowboys for a lifetime in "Brokeback Mountain," and also the bloody frontier surrounded by blizzards in Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight."
It is contradictory yet striking: this state is extremely conservative, the most "deep red" in the United States, where the Republican Party has dominated for four decades. In the 2024 U.S. election, over 70% of voters cast their ballots for Trump. Yet it was also at the forefront of its time; as early as 1869, it became the first U.S. state—the "Equality State"—to grant women the right to vote.
But Wyoming is by no means a financial desert. Every summer, some of the most powerful people in the world gather there: at Jackson Hole, a quiet resort town in Wyoming, the annual symposium of global central bankers is hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. From Alan Greenspan (the 13th Chair of the Federal Reserve) to Jerome Powell, nearly every pivotal shift in global monetary policy has been set in this alpine meadow surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
It is precisely this proud and distinctive "Western spirit" that once again brought Wyoming into the public spotlight in early 2026.
On January 7 local time, the state officially announced the launch of the $FRNT stablecoin, initially deployed on the Solana blockchain and supporting six EVM-compatible chains. This is the world's first U.S. dollar stablecoin backed by a "state government credit."
Lighting the Way Through the Ruins: The Regenerative Path of Energy Transition
Wyoming's radicalism stems from a deep fiscal anxiety: the "underground wealth" that has sustained this land for a century is running out.
As the energy heartland supplying 40% of the coal used across the United States, this region once created a myth of a "tax-free paradise" through mining resource taxes: residents paid no personal income tax, and businesses paid no corporate income tax.
One of the key reasons is that this sparsely populated state has created remarkable wealth thanks to the continuous resource exports from the Powder River Basin. Its per capita GDP has long ranked among the top ten in the United States, and in energy boom years, it can even rival that of New York and California.
This prosperity once gave Wyoming enough confidence to refuse imposing personal income tax, corporate income tax, and inheritance tax. However, it was a fragile prosperity built upon heavy industry.
Image source: University of Wyoming Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy
Since 2011, Wyoming's pillar industries have experienced a ten-year "avalanche":
The merciless market replacement: The rise of low-cost shale gas and renewable energy has dealt a dimensional blow to coal in terms of power generation costs.
The tightening of environmental restraints: The advancement of U.S. federal government carbon emission regulations (such as the Clean Power Plan) has led to the closure of coal-fired power plants across the country.
A fiscal cliff-like gap: According to official data from CREG cited by Wyoming Public Media, the state's coal severance tax revenue has dropped from $290 million in 2011 to $170 million in 2022. Coal production in the state is projected to reach the second-lowest level in history by 2025, only half of its peak in 2008. Additionally, "coal lease bonuses," which once served as a significant source of funding for school infrastructure, have already dropped to zero.
"If we don't make an effort, we'll become the next West Virginia (note: a traditional coal-mining region in the U.S. that has become one of the poorest states after the decline of the coal industry)." — This deep sense of urgency has driven even the most conservative cowboy politicians in the area to develop a strong awareness of the need for action.
They realized that since they could not change the trend of energy transition, they had to leverage Wyoming's most core asset—the extremely business-friendly legislative environment.
Wyoming's innovative spirit actually has a long history. In 1977, it was the first state in the U.S. to invent the LLC (Limited Liability Company), which remains the most popular business entity to this day.
Since 2018, in order to save itself, this most "red" conservative state has been forced to embark on a long journey of institutional innovation in the cryptocurrency world.
In 2019, Wyoming passed House Bill No. 74 (HB 74), establishing a new type of financial entity: the Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) license. This is not a traditional bank in the conventional sense, but rather an institution that "does not engage in lending activities and is solely responsible for custody and settlement."
In September 2020, the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken obtained the first national SPDI license, establishing Kraken Bank. This marked the first time that a cryptocurrency asset received the status of a "bank" under a state legal framework.
In 2021, the state was the first to pass the DAO Bill, allowing code-governed organizations to register as legal LLC entities.
As for the newly launched $FRNT, according to the Wyoming Stablecoin Taskforce (WST) plan, the $FRNT stablecoin is over-collateralized by 102% with U.S. Treasury bonds and cash.
The reserve fund is managed by investment giant Franklin Templeton, which oversees approximately $160 billion in assets, while custodial services are provided by its subsidiary, Fiduciary Trust Company International. The core business logic is as follows: the state government collects dollars, purchases U.S. Treasury securities, and the resulting interest income is directly allocated to the "School Foundation Fund," providing support for local public education.
Stablecoins: Who Will Benefit?
This leap in Wyoming actually marks the stablecoin sector entering its second half: shifting from private companies' "credit game" to a "public good" at the governmental level.
In the past, discussions about stablecoins focused on the compliance risks of Tether or Circle; however, within Wyoming's narrative, stablecoins are returning to their essence—as an extremely efficient and low-cost payment channel (with settlement fees typically under $0.01)—and are beginning to exhibit characteristics of public infrastructure.
However, this "digital highway" has encountered invisible barriers in the real world.
In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a typical two-bedroom apartment now rents for $4,000 per month, 25% higher than in Los Angeles. Despite the area's per capita GDP ranking among the highest in the nation, about 10% of its residents still face food shortages. For blue-collar workers who rely on one or two jobs to make ends meet and take early morning commuter buses, "stablecoins" sound more like a distant technological concept.
This division is not accidental, but rather carefully designed and maintained. A state finance official confessed to prospect.org that through land acquisition and planning regulations, the landscape here has been shaped to present an image where "poverty is invisible."
Writer Annie Proulx once depicted the harshness of the Wyoming landscape; today, this harshness is folded into two layers of realities by technology and capital, which do not penetrate each other.
On one side are the wealthy classes creating tax-free utopias amid mountains and forests; on the other side are ordinary Americans who support all of this yet have nowhere to call home—their lives quietly folded away, both in reality and in online narratives.
When I browsed through discussions about Wyoming on Reddit, I found complaints from locals everywhere:
"Jackson is merely a playground for super-rich individuals to play cowboys on weekends; they list it as their primary residence to avoid property taxes and income taxes."
"The people here are libertarians who try to create a 'libertarian paradise,' believing it will be heaven for the working class. In reality, however, it benefits those who are already extremely wealthy, who treat the place as their home (or second, third residence) because policies of the 'libertarian paradise,' such as less regulation, lower taxes, and so on, favor them."
In this turmoil, the state government is attempting to build fiscal autonomy in the digital era on the ruins of the coal industry, using legal frameworks and stablecoins. Data shows that Wyoming has 348 limited liability companies per 1,000 adults, surpassing Delaware and becoming the new institutional haven in the United States.
But can this influx of digital wealth truly mend the fractures in this land?
Reference materials:
Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (2025.10)
CNBC: Wyoming is promoting cryptocurrency payments and trying to outpace the Fed in launching a digital dollar.
The American Prospect: Broke and Beaten on the Cryptocurrency Frontier
wyofile: Clean Power Plan may cut Wyo coal revenue 31-63 percent
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