Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon distanced himself Wednesday from a failed effort by legislators in his state to establish a Bitcoin reserve, emphasizing he’s focused on more practical crypto initiatives.

“Wyoming has been pretty methodical in how we approach this,” Gordon told Decrypt at the DC Blockchain Summit. “Bitcoin has been incredibly volatile.”

“It’s been a bit of a learning curve,” he added, regarding legislators’ approach to bold initiatives like the Bitcoin reserve.

Back in January, Wyoming joined a wave of other states in weighing the prospect of using public funds to purchase large sums of Bitcoin as strategic investments. Last month, however, a bill on the subject failed overwhelmingly to pass out of committee in the Republican-dominated state.

As Gordon sees it, political and market tailwinds have recently shifted overwhelmingly in the crypto industry’s favor—a development he supports. 

But at the same time, the remarkable bullishness of the current moment has led some to try to catch a multi-trillion-dollar wave, he said, instead of building common-sense blockchain products first. 

“It’s great that the climate has changed—it opens a lot of doors,” the governor said. “But what can we make sure works? As opposed to [saying] ‘Holy cow, let’s just go all in.’” 

To that effect, Gordon doubled down Wednesday on his commitment to launching a state-backed stablecoin in Wyoming. 

Earlier onstage at the DC Blockchain Summit, he suggested the token, WYST, which is currently in testing, could be ready to launch as soon as July. 

To Gordon, WYST is the exact sort of crypto-related project Wyoming should be focused on, given the clear benefits he believes it offers citizens of his state: flexibility and security, plus an interest generated on the token’s Treasury reserves that will fund the state’s school system.

“We’re anxious to make sure the product we have works and is transparent,” Gordon said. “People can have faith in it, and then it becomes useful, and then we can expand from there.”

When President Donald Trump ordered the creation of a federal Strategic Bitcoin Reserve earlier this month via executive order, the move was hailed both in the crypto industry and Republican circles.

And yet, in recent weeks, numerous deep-red states have soundly rejected proposals to establish state-level Bitcoin reserves. 

A potentially crucial difference between the federal and state proposals is that some form of Trump’s national Bitcoin reserve already exists, thanks to the billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin seized over the years by the federal government. 

State proposals, on the other hand, would require the purchase of new Bitcoin with public funds—a bolder gambit. 

Earlier this month, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced a bill that would see the U.S. government purchase some $80 billion worth of additional Bitcoin to bolster its reserves. The plan has yet to be explicitly endorsed by the White House.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

A solo Bitcoin miner hit the jackpot early Friday, mining a block without a pool of supporting miners and bagging a $266,000 reward in the process. But just how realistic is such a feat?

On Friday, an unknown miner processed Bitcoin block 888,737. The block contained 2,327 transactions and the miner received a payout of 3.125 BTC, as well as 0.032 BTC in fees. 

At today’s Bitcoin price of $84,257 per coin, that’s a more than $266,000 payday.

Bitcoin miners work to process blocks on the cryptocurrency’s network. Blocks are full of transaction data and are part of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Miners are given newly minted coins: a 3.125 BTC fixed reward, along with the transaction fees paid by those using the payment system during that particular block window. 

As the network has grown, mining operations have become more energy-intensive, and are typically now industrial-sized setups consisting of warehouses full of machines. 

But occasionally, a solo miner can score big using a home hobby machine. In this case, according to blockchain data, the miner was using a DIY FutureBit Apollo machine. 

However, experts told Decrypt that things might not be as simple as they sound: “solo mining,” per blockchain jargon, technically refers to any miner that’s not in a mining pool. Pools are groups of crypto miners that share their resources so that they have a better chance of processing a transaction. But they also then share the reward.

“The term ‘solo miner’ is a really broad term,” pseudonymous Bitcoin miner Econoalchemist told Decrypt. “It could just be one dude in his apartment, or a warehouse full of high-powered miners.”

Ultimately, this means that a “solo miner” could have a room full of hobby miners all switched on and working to secure a transaction. Such an operation wouldn’t necessarily be as easy—or cheap—to set up, though it would give the miner a better shot at securing a block win.

Still, with solo miners securing numerous block wins in recent months, Friday’s news may spur more Bitcoiners to try and have a go at home mining.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

The United States Treasury announced Friday that it has delisted Ethereum coin mixing service Tornado Cash from its list of parties sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, reversing course after first blacklisting the service in 2022.

“Based on the Administration’s review of the novel legal and policy issues raised by use of financial sanctions against financial and commercial activity occurring within evolving technology and legal environments, we have exercised our discretion to remove the economic sanctions against Tornado Cash as reflected in Treasury’s Monday filing in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury,” the Treasury said Friday.

But the Treasury Department is actually tardy in its sanctions reversal.

In November, a fifth circuit judge ruled that the Treasury Dept. had overstepped its authority by targeting Tornado Cash’s smart contracts. The judge wrote that autonomous software cannot be classified as property and therefore cannot be sanctioned.

After the judge’s ruling, Department of Justice prosecutors asked that the Treasury be granted a 60-day delay. That pushed OFAC’s deadline to March 17.

Coinbase backed the lawsuit, arguing that the sanctioning of Tornado Cash was unjust. And Paul Grewal, the crypto exchange’s chief legal officer, has had a lot to say about the delays.

There’s also a pending money laundering trial against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, who was arrested in 2023. In November, after the ruling that the Tornado Cash sanctions were an overreach, a U.S. district court judge struck down Storm’s motion to have his case dismissed.

The Treasury Dept. initially sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, saying in a statement at the time that it had been used “to launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019.”

In Friday’s statement, the Treasury said that it continues to be concerned about money laundering, particularly from North Korea—whose malicious hacking groups have stolen billions from various crypto protocols and companies. But the department is trying to balance maintaining vigilance without stamping out innovation in the process.

“Digital assets present enormous opportunities for innovation and value creation for the American people,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, in a statement. “Securing the digital asset industry from abuse by North Korea and other illicit actors is essential to establishing U.S. leadership and ensuring that the American people can benefit from financial innovation and inclusion.”

It’s worth noting that despite the U.S. sanctions and lawsuits, Tornado Cash was never actually disabled—much to the chagrin of lawamkers. In fact, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin very publicly declared that he had used it to privately make donations to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with additional detail.

Edited by Andrew Hayward