Wyoming is pushing crypto payments and trying to beat the Fed to a digital dollar
Long gone are the days when venture capital was flowing into fintech startups with bold ideas — and little to show in terms of business metrics and fundamentals.
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As crypto investing becomes more mainstream and institutionalized with bitcoin ETFs, Wyoming is already pushing into the next phase of growth for crypto: consumer payments.
The state is creating its own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, called the Wyoming stable token, which it plans to launch in the first quarter of 2025 to give individuals and businesses a faster and cheaper way to transact while creating a new revenue stream for the state. The group behind it is hoping it can serve as the model for a digitized dollar at the federal level.
Success would be “adoption of a stablecoin … that’s transparent, that is fully backed by our short-term Treasurys [and] that’s dollar dependent,” Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon told CNBC at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole. “One of the big things for me is to be able to bring back onshore a lot of our debt, because if it’s bought by treasuries and supported by Treasurys, it will help to stabilize that market to a degree.”
“It is clear to me is that digital assets are going to have a future,” Gordon said. “The United States has to address this issue. Washington’s being a little bit stodgy, which is why Wyoming, being a nimble and entrepreneurial state, can make a difference.”
The Cowboy State isn’t new to pushing the boundaries of business law. In 1977, it created the LLC and it has passed more than 30 pieces of crypto legislation to create a favorable regulatory environment for businesses and investors since 2018.
Development on the project is ramping at a time when many crypto market participants are wondering what’s next. Making bitcoin ETFs available to U.S. investors in January was a huge feat. It was the result of a more than 10-year effort by the industry, and sent prices to new records this year. But although the market is still bullish, trading has been rangebound for months.
Plus, crypto and its underlying blockchain technology were always intended to be used for more than just price speculation. Consumer payments, in many cases via stablecoins, are widely seen as the killer app for crypto and gateway to mainstream adoption of this technology.
The vision
Wyoming is currently vetting potential partners and vendors with more tech expertise to help build the stable token. It will require an exchange and wallet providers – Coinbase and Kraken, for example, offer both – to purchase and hold the token. The state plans to issue the token to an exchange so the exchange can issue it to the retail user. From there, it should be just another payment method for everyday things, said Flavia Naves, a commissioner at the Wyoming Stable Token Commission.
“When you walk into Cowboy Coffee in Jackson, Wyoming, and you want to buy your latte, there’s going to be their wallet there in Solana that you can use to buy your coffee with the Wyoming token,” she said, describing the vision for the stablecoin.
It also has a public good tilt to it: the commission plans to invest reserves that back each token in circulation into Treasurys and reverse repos, and use the interest made on those investments to fund its public schools.
At the conference, Gordon emphasized the importance of resisting the urge to focus too much on how much money the state can make here and to instead prioritize reserve management.
Keeping parity
Stablecoins are supposed to keep parity with an underlying asset, usually the U.S. dollar, but they can and have deviated from their pegs due to a spike or drop in demand – especially with a lack of liquidity – poor collateralization, regulatory crackdowns or network congestion.
Naves emphasized that there will be a “buffer” in the reserves to account for any potential deviations and full transparency to establish and maintain public trust.
“There will be audits available to the public on how many tokens [are] in circulation [and] how much money is in the bank account backing, so you can always see there is a 1-to-1 [stablecoin-to-dollar ratio],” she said. “This is a public token as well so as with any public service, all the information is available.”
The commission invites the public virtually to its meetings on the stable token and posts the minutes to its website afterward.
“This is fully reserved and part of what we’ve been working out … is to make sure that we can fully back whatever it is we’re going to do,” Gordon said. “Plus the fact that our legislation says that when a person buys a Treasury or a repo, we’re going to have that in evidence, you’re going to be able to see that. So hopefully we can avoid the de begging issues.”
Digitizing the dollar – and beyond
Naves echoed that the Wyoming stable token is in part a response to the reluctance of the Federal Reserve to create a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, at the federal level. According to Atlantic Council, there are more than 30 countries piloting a CBDC, including the digital euro, and 19 of the G20 countries are now in the advanced stages of developing one.
CBDCs have been widely criticized due to concerns around privacy and surveillance on government-run blockchains. But Naves said that wouldn’t apply here since Wyoming plans to use public blockchains, such as Ethereum or Solana, instead of private networks. The group hasn’t specified exactly which networks it’ll use but has said it wants the coin to be available on several different platforms.
If it’s successful, it could go beyond the dollar.
“Down the road, the intent is to utilize the same technology … to enable other elements to turn into tokens and be on blockchains, whether it is commodities such as gold or oil, whether it is real estate, other governmental obligations – those are still to be determined,” Naves said. “But the success of this initial use case, which is digitization of the U.S. dollar, is the one that is going to enable other use cases to proceed.”
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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday that the company’s U.S. operations will be housed in a new joint venture.
The entity is named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo sent by Chew and obtained by CNBC. As part of the joint venture, Chew said the company has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said that the deal’s “closing date” is Jan. 22.
Under a national security law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January, China-based ByteDance was required to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban in the country. In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal that would keep TikTok operational in the U.S. by meeting the requirements of a law originally signed by former President Joe Biden.
Chew noted that the new TikTok joint venture would be “majority owned by American investors, governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”
The U.S. joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each. Just over 30% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance, and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.
The TikTok chief said the entity will be responsible for protecting U.S. data, ensuring the security of its prized algorithm, content moderation and “software assurance.” He added that the joint venture will “have the exclusive right and authority to provide assurances that content, software, and data for American users is secure.”
In addition to being an investor, Oracle will serve as the “trusted security partner” in charge of auditing and validating that it complies with “agreed upon National Security Terms,” the memo said. Sensitive U.S. data will be stored in Oracle’s U.S.-based cloud computing data centers, Chew wrote.
The new TikTok entity will also be tasked with retraining the video app’s core content recommendation algorithm “on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said.
Chew noted that TikTok global U.S. entities “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”
Under Trump’s executive order in September, the attorney general was blocked from enforcing the national security law for a 120-day period in order to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed,” allowing the deal to finalize by Jan 23.
WATCH: TikTok signs deal for sale of U.S. unit to joint venture
The VC arms of Google and Nvidia have invested in Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable’s $330 million Series B at a $6.6 billion valuation, the company announced on Thursday.
The news confirms an earlier story from CNBC, which reported on Tuesday that Lovable had raised at that valuation, trebling its valuation from its previous round in July, and that the investors included U.S. VC firms Accel and Khosla Ventures.
CapitalG, one of Google’s VC divisions, and Menlo Ventures led the round. Alongside Accel and Khosla, Nvidia venture arm NVentures, actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s VC firm Kinship Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, T.Capital, Hubspot Ventures, DST Global, EQT Global, Creandum and Evantic also participated.
The fresh funds take Lovable’s total raised in 2025 to over $500 million.
“Lovable has done something rare: built a product that enterprises and founders both love,” said Laela Sturdy, managing partner at CapitalG in a statement accompanying the announcement.
“The demand we’re seeing from Fortune 500 companies signals a fundamental shift in how software gets built.”
Lovable’s platform uses AI models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic to help users build apps and websites using text prompts, without technical knowledge of coding.
The startup reported $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in November, just under a year after achieving $1 million in ARR for the first time. It was founded in 2023 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin.
Vibe coding startups have seen big interest from VCs in recent times, as investors bet on their promise of drastically reducing the time it takes to create software and apps.
In the U.S., Anysphere, which created coding tool Cursor, raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation in November. In September, Replit hit a $3 billion price tag after picking up $250 million and Vercel closed a $300 million round at a $9.3 billion valuation.
The Micron logo is seen displayed at the 8th China International Import Expo.
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Micron Technology‘s stock jumped 15% after the company signaled robust demand for its memory chips and blew away fiscal first-quarter estimates.
During an earnings call with analysts, Micron, which makes memory storage used for computers and artificial intelligence servers, said data center needs have fueled greater demand for its products.
Micron said it expects the total addressable market for high-bandwidth memory to hit $100 billion by 2028, growing at a 40% compounded annual growth rate. Management also upped its capital expenditures guidance to $20 billion from $18 billion.
“We are more than sold out,” said business chief Sumit Sadana. “We have a significant amount of unmet demand in our models and this is just consistent with an environment where the demand is substantially higher than supply for the foreseeable future.
Micron topped Wall Street estimates for the fiscal first quarter and issued blowout guidance.
The company reported adjusted earnings of $4.78 per share on $13.64 billion in revenue, surpassing LSEG estimates for earnings of $3.95 per share and $12.84 billion in sales.
Revenues in the current quarter are expected to hit about $18.70 billion, blowing past the $14.20 billion expected by LSEG. Adjusted earnings are forecast to reach $8.42, versus expectations of $4.78 per share.
JPMorgan upped its price target on the stock following the results, citing the favorable pricing setup, while Bank of America upgraded shares to a buy rating.
Morgan Stanley called the results the best revenue and net income upside in the “history of the U.S. semis industry” outside of Nvidia.
“If AI keeps growing as we expect, we believe that the next 12 months are going to have broader coat tails to the AI trade than just the processor names and memory would be the biggest beneficiary,” analysts wrote.
WATCH: Micron shares spike on better-than-expected quarterly results
Micron year-to-date stock chart.
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